You can now watch a brand new thriller on Prime Video in which Jude Law gets to the bottom of a murderous story. It’s worth it!
Just a few months after celebrating its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, it is already streaming secretly on Amazon Prime Video. And yet, The Order deserves a lot more attention. The modern mix of Western, heist film and crime movie is one of the strongest genre films of the last festival season and boasts a first-class ensemble. Read on to find out why Jude Law’s trip to the American backwoods is worth your while.
The Order: In this thriller on Amazon Prime, an FBI agent hunts down a terrorist group
Jude Law plays the dishevelled FBI agent Terry Husk in The Order. In the early 1980s, after a few exhausting investigations, he requests a transfer to the depths of Idaho to open an office for the agency. However, instead of a few quiet days at work and hunting trips at the weekend, a terrorist threat awaits him. Because just a few miles away, a group of neo-Nazis are up to no good.
Their leader, Bob Matthews (Nicholas Hoult from Nosferatu), and his armed organization “The Order” are gathering young men and their families who share his racist ideology. Matthews finances his growing community with robberies, which carries out bomb attacks on synagogues and assassinations of critical voices. Agent Husk soon picks up the trail, but he has no idea what means Matthews is willing to resort to.
Now on Amazon Prime: The Order is based on a true story from the 1980s
The organization that gives the title was actually in the US state of Washington at the time and Nicholas Hoult’s character Bob Matthews is also based on a real person. The facts of the story go back to the non-fiction book The Silent Brotherhood by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt. However, director Justin Kurzel (Macbeth) and screenwriter Zach Baylin adapt the true story of The Order as a stylistically confident mix of neo-western and heist film.
Jude Law’s character resembles the sheriffs of yesteryear, hunting down the bad guys with the utmost obsession. In contrast, Nicholas Hoult’s antagonist is portrayed as an extremist who has turned his dangerous ideology into a profession with perfectionism and ruthlessness. For him, crime is life and hatred of Jews and all non-white people is the air he breathes. Both are on a collision course in front of barren mountain panoramas and dark forests, which fuels the extremely abysmal atmosphere of the film.
The fact that Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult, as well as supporting actors such as Tye Sheridan and Jurnee Smollett, are pitted against each other here, contributes to the remarkable character of The Order. This is not a film you watch quickly, but one that entices you with its thrills and guns, but which, unfortunately, is highly topical.
