The Order (2024)

Terry Husk takes a sleepy posting in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, hoping to slow down, and the quiet lasts about one scene. Jude Law plays him as a worn-out FBI veteran with a familiar movie-cop habit of charging in without backup, though Law keeps him stoic and human. It’s 1983. A local deputy, Jamie Bowen, played by Tye Sheridan, has a missing man, a string of robberies and a hunch about who’s behind them. The trail leads to Bob Mathews, who has broken away from an older hate group to build a more violent one of his own. Nicholas Hoult makes Mathews frightening by keeping him calm, organized and persuasive. Justin Kurzel directs it as a lean, tense procedure, skillful and never flashy, and it never turns these men into antiheroes. It runs 116 minutes and holds a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. A 7.6 because two strong performances and a steady hand make a hard true story land. $151.29 says you look up Coeur d’Alene afterward and are surprised how peaceful it looks today.

What works: Jude Law’s restrained agent and Nicholas Hoult’s frightening Mathews give the film two strong poles, and Kurzel stages the robberies and the standoffs with tight, unshowy control.

What doesn’t: Husk is built from familiar parts, a burned-out loner with a strained family who keeps ignoring protocol, and the script leans hard on that type.

Who it’s for: Viewers who like patient true-crime procedurals and want real history told straight, without the bad guys turned into antiheroes.