Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult Went to a Dark Place to Explore American Racism in Neo-Nazi Crime Thriller ‘The Order’
The cast of The Order went to some pretty dark places to tell a true story of American racism. The new film from Justin Kurzel (Macbeth, Assassin’s Creed) stars Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Jurnee Smollett, and Zach Baylin, all of whom were in attendance for the film’s world premiere in competition at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
Inspired by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt’s 1989 non-fiction book The Silent Brotherhood, the movie follows an FBI investigation into a series of bank robberies and car heists in the Pacific Northwest. A lone FBI agent, Terry Husk (Law) believes that the crimes are being committed by a group of dangerous domestic terrorists. Eventually, his investigation leads back to a white supremacist group centered on the charismatic leader Bob Mathews (Hoult).
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Although set in the 1980s, Law spoke about the importance of the film for the current day, with far-right extremist groups on the rise worldwide.
“Sadly, the relevance speaks for itself,” said Law. “It felt like a piece of work that needed to be made now. It’s always interesting finding a piece from the past that has some relevant relationship to the present day.”
Added Hoult: “Hopefully the film, perhaps, if people see it, can shed more light on how these sorts of events occur and on the people that are instigating them, [and can] help prevent it happening anymore in the future.”
Hoult said he had to “delve into a lot of horrible, dark stuff that wasn’t enjoyable” in the research for the role, something other cast members echoed. Hoult noted that he and Law didn’t speak or interact with each other for the first four weeks of filming in a bid to build distance between them. Law revealed Kurzel tasked Hoult with trailing Law for a day without his fellow actor knowing.
“One of Jude’s tasks was to follow me for a day, and I didn’t know that, I just found out that he did this,” said Hoult. “We were kept separate. And the crew were fantastic in this they kind of really enjoyed this idea of keeping us as different forces throughout the film.”
Smollett noted she interviewed “a lot of Black and Latinx former [FBI] agents, and it became very clear to me early on how some of these cases were very personal for them, and how even though you go to work, you still take work home. And it’s, it’s, it’s a theme that Husk and [her character Joanne] Carney both share in that work is everything. It’s their identity in life, and they’ve sacrificed a life in order to have it.”
Law said he reveled in the realism of Kurzel’s approach to the movie, including the very prominent mustache he grew for his role.
“There was a lot of discussion of facial hair,” said Law, “every agent I interviewed had a mustache, so it was just a given. It almost became a joke that everyone, every agent, had an enormous stash.'”
The Order is set to bow in the U.S. in December via Vertical, with Amazon Prime Video releasing it in multiple territories internationally.
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