'The Order' Impresses at the Venice Film Festival

        On December 6, 2024, after an impressive showing at the Venice Film Festival, Vertical releases 'The Order', which has earned predominantly positive reviews from critics, currently holding at 76% on Rotten Tomatoes. In the film, "For over a year, a series of bold daylight bank robberies and armored car heists leaves law enforcement baffled and the public panicked throughout the Pacific Northwest. As the attacks become increasingly violent, FBI agent Terry Husk (Jude Law) becomes convinced that the robberies are the work of a domestic terrorist gang that plan to use the loot to finance an armed uprising against the U.S. government. Based on a true story, The Order follows Husk and his team into the tangled world of white supremacists to try to head off a violent uprising that could shatter the nation. As the militia builds a war chest of over $4 million, Husk pursues the malevolent racist Bob Mathews to a final bloody standoff that will go down in U.S. history." The ensemble cast includes Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Jurnee Smollett, Alison Oliver, Marc Maron, and George Tchortov. But what did the critics say?

        Gregory Ellwood of The Playlist notes, "Despite a subject matter that feels shockingly contemporary, a plethora of fine performances, and true-life events that are a gift to any screenwriter, the movie ends, for lack of a better word, with a complete thud. And that’s not hyperbole. In all fairness, we cannot remember the last time we screened a movie that closed with such a dramatic whimper. There is nothing to spoil. Nothing is shocking. It just comes to a disjointed conclusion. And completely takes out the emotional sails of everything that preceded it. So much so that you leave the theater wondering, “How on earth did that happen?” We can’t wait for an answer."

Photo by Isaac Moore on Unsplash

        Alonso Duralde of The Film Verdict says, "The relevant can still feel depressingly familiar, which keeps The Order from registering as anything but a slightly more competent tale of FBI agents circling in on bomb-throwing racists." 

        Jonathan Romney of Guardian praises the film, stating, "Visually though, the film means business, with the desaturated, almost tawdry pallor of Adam Arkapaw’s photography evoking a weary early 80s America, in contrast with the richly tactile panoramas of the film’s northwestern forests, rivers and sweeps of rockface. As for Law – sporting a bristling moustache and some girth that evoke the weariness that Husk must fight in himself – he gives a sometimes warm, sometimes commandingly irascible performance that shows this actor moving confidently into middle-career authority. He and Hoult’s icy-eyed adversary combine to somewhat mythical resonance; a wrestle-with-the-demon duo that actually fits the political context to pointed effect."

        Ema Sasic of Next Best Picture writes, "Kurzel, who previously examined the life and behaviors of a mentally distressed young man in “Nitram,” based on the Australian mass shooter Martin Bryant, delivers this gripping and intense police procedural that doesn’t let up until the very end."