The Order is a serious drama, and here we should pause to pay tribute to the fact that a serious drama is playing at the local multiplex where such films are rarely seen these days. It’s getting glowing reviews, in part for that reason. Though the crowds in theater lobbies are still there mostly just for Wicked, Moana 2, and Gladiator II.  

Based on the 1989 nonfiction book The Silent Brotherhood by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt, The Order charts the FBI’s pursuit of the neo-Nazi group based in the Pacific Northwest and actively working in 1983 and 1984 toward an armed revolt against the US government, partly inspired by the novel The Turner Diaries by white nationalist William Luther Pierce. The impressively mustached and beefed-up Jude Law plays transplanted middle-aged agent Terry Husk, who’s so hard-driven in his pursuit of mobsters and Ku Klux Klan leaders, his idea of “taking it slow” is relocating to the Pacific Northwest to hunt rural white supremacists. He’s got the estranged family, the heart surgery scar, and the smoking and drinking habits of an almost-deranged true believer who’ll never be able to quit till he dies on the job.

Unfortunately, his methods are so macho and uncompromising, he tends to be a danger to himself and others, particularly those he works with. This doesn’t bode well for mild-mannered local cop Jamie Bowen (Tye Sheridan) or scrappy fellow agent Joanne Carney (Jurnee Smollett).