Producers: Bryan Haas, Stuart Ford, Justin Kurzel and Jude Law Director: Justin Kurzel   Screenplay: Zach Baylin   Cast: Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Jurnee Smollett, Alison Oliver, Odessa Young, Sebastian Pigott, George Tchortov, Victor Slezak, Morgan Holmstrom, Ryan Chandoul Wesley, Huxley Fisher, Philip Forest Lewitski, Philip Granger, Daniel Doheny, Geena Meszaros and Mark Maron   Distributor: Vertical

Grade: B

An early, almost forgotten, episode in America’s modern white supremacist history is dramatized effectively by Australian director Justin Kurzel, who dealt with mayhem in his native country in films like “The Snowtown Murders,” “The True History of the Kelly Gang” and “Nitram” but stumbled with his two international Michael Fassbender starrers, “Macbeth” and “Assassin’s Creed.” 

Working from a script by Zach Baylin based on the 1989 non-fiction book “The Silent Brotherhood: Inside America’s Racist Underground” by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt, Kurzel tells the story of Robert Jay, or Bob, Mathews, the neo-Nazi activist who created the titular group, also called The Order, to pull off robberies of banks and armored cars in order to finance the sort of revolution and race war depicted in William Luther Pierce’s infamous 1978 novel “The Turner Diaries.”

It’s framed in the form of a cat-and-mouse story, in which Mathews’ plot is uncovered, and Mathews himself hunted down, by FBI agent Terry Husk, a man haunted by his previous undercover work.  (Husk is a fictionalized version of Wayne Manis, an agent who played a major role in Mathews’ downfall, which culminated in his death in a 1984 shootout with federal agents at the rural Washington home that caught fire during the stand-off.)

The transformation of Husk into a troubled character is a typical Hollywood-style gloss on the historical record, and there are other alterations made in the script for dramatic effect as well.  But overall, the film is more faithful to the actual events than most pictures of this sort.

Chain-smoking Husk (Jude Law) arrives in a deserted Washington state field office world-weary and without his family.  He looks into a spate of bombings and robberies that the sheriff (Philip Granger) hasn’t investigated very seriously, but gung-ho deputy Jamie Bowen (Tye Sheridan) thinks might be the work of a right-wing militant group associated with the Aryan Nation, a white-supremacist religious outfit headed by Richard Butler (Victor Slezak). 

Husk is doubtful, but a visit to Butler’s compound and to Bonnie Sue West (Geena Meszaros) persuades him otherwise.  Her husband Walter (Daniel Doheny), an old friend of Bowen’s who’d been spouting radical ideas rather freely to the likes of liberal radio talk-show host Alan Berg (Marc Maron) has disappeared, and Husk and Bowen find his body buried in the forest, a victim (we see in an early scene) of his comrades in The Order, which has splintered off from Butler’s church because of what its leader Mathews (Nicholas Hoult) considers an overly passive approach.

There follows a complicated pursuit of Mathews and his motley crew of confederates by Husk and Bowen, who are joined by Joanne Carney (Jurnee Smollett), a colleague of Husk’s, and, eventually, plenty of other agents, especially after Mathews’ followers assassinate Berg, bits of whose broadcasts have punctuated the film from the start.  In the process we’re introduced to Bowen’s devoted wife (Morgan Holmstrom) and son (Ryan Chandoul Wesley), and that domestic bond naturally presages his fate in a shoot-out that erupts when the lawmen attempt to foil one of the gang’s robberies—another typical Hollywood invention, but excitingly staged by Kurzel, cinematographer Adam Arkapaw and editor Nick Fenton.  Fleeting allusion is also made to Mathews’ domestic life, which involves both a wife (Alison Oliver) and a lover (Odessa Young), as well as a young son (Huxley Fisher) whom his father intends to follow in his footsteps.  And there’s a tense sequence when Husk and Mathews briefly meet as the FBI man goes hunting and Mathews considers taking him out.

For the most part, “The Order” brings this early event in the recent history of white supremacism in America to vivid life, thanks to Kurzel’s intense direction and compelling performances down the line.  Despite the tendency to tweak the narrative to meet audience expectations, in terms of accuracy it’s leagues ahead of Costa-Gavras’ 1988 “Betrayal,” which altered the facts to such an extent as to make its connection to the record beyond tenuous (the picture was mediocre in purely dramatic terms as well).

Though Husk may be a character colored by Hollywood convention, Law invests him with gruff passion, and Sheridan nicely etches the arc of a young man who embraces darker impulses as he rushes to engage against dangerous forces.  The real revelation, though, is Hoult, who has usually played more benign figures but here captures the malignancy Mathews hides beneath an ordinary exterior.  There are moments—like a speech at Butler’s church—where he could be more charismatic, but in general he’s a genuinely menacing presence.

Without exaggerating, production designer Karen Murphy and costumer Rachel Dainer-Best evoke the atmosphere of rural Washington and Idaho in the mid-eighties, which they and Arkapaw make no attempt to prettify, even if the vistas are often magnificent.  (The film was actually shot in Canada.)  Jed Kurzel’s score is suitably downbeat, though it pulses up during the action scenes.

Though “The Order” is about events in the eighties, it obviously carries contemporary relevance, given the realities of today’s political climate. The film doesn’t neglect to note that, but mostly it’s content to let the fact that the past is prologue to the present resonate on its own.