Known for his haunting dramas, such as “Macbeth” and “Nitram”—artistic endeavors routinely invited to premiere in Cannes or at the Venice Film Festival—Australian filmmaker Justin Kurzel’s latest film is “The Order.”
Starring the superb cast of Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Jurnee Smollett, Alison Oliver, Odessa Young, and Marc Maron, “The Order” is Kurzel’s version of a 1970s Sydney Lumet-directed crime drama. Law stars as a grizzled and ailing Idaho-based FBI agent who notices a pattern in recent bank robberies. He soon realizes this is the work of a radical white supremacist led by a charismatic leader played by Nicholas Hoult.
Tye Sheridan co-stars a young local police officer who collaborates with Law’s character on the detective work and chase, and Jurnee Smollett plays another FBI agent overseeing the two.
“The Order” is an incisive work, chilling for its relevancy in our scary modern times and compelling for the way it not only crafts an engaging and thrilling crime drama but also portrays the deep cuts of the job and all the sacrifices made along the way.
We recently spoke to Kurzel about “The Order,” his cast and much more, and about future projects with Jacob Elordi, Nicole Kidman, Jason Bateman, Jude Law and more.
It’s probably some apparent reason, but tell me what spoke to you about this and why you wanted to make it.
It was a script sent to me cold by Zach Bailyn. And I read it instantly. It reminded me of a lot of American films that I loved. It was a sort of tone that came off the page of a kind of [William] Friedkin, sort of Sidney [Lumet] type, yeah, American sort of thrillers that don’t get made anymore. But it was really kind of after that first heist and sort of understanding and realizing, “Oh, wow, these guys aren’t just robbing banks for filling up their purses. It’s to sort of fund this homegrown terrorist.” Then, reading its link to “The Turner Diaries” and what “The Turner Diaries” were, I realized that it was still a sort of legacy that I think gripped me. So that’s probably what grabbed me straight away. And it’s scarce to find something that sits within a genre, but it has something underneath that. It’s got a bit of a zeitgeist about it, which certainly did for me.
Seeing it post-election, that changes a lot, at least for Americans. And even when it was announced, I thought, Wow, this is really timely. And I’m wondering how much that factored in.
So, I read it and agreed to come onto it before January 6. I remember watching a lot of the footage. And then there was an article in The New York Times about how “The Turner Diaries” were present at that. Outside the capitol building were props of nooses that reflected the chapter in the book, Day of the Rope. And, you know, people were seen there with copies of the book. That shocked me. It was, you know, that this sort of fabled book was like a kids’ fiction book in a way. It’s almost like a “Famous Five” adventure book, yet this play make aspect of how to take down the U.S. government.
I was astonished that it was still around and that many people didn’t know much about it; that was sitting in the shadows. Zach did mention its presence around Timothy McVeigh that he had, some kind of that a copy of it had been found, you know, in the car after the bombings. So, its reach intrigued me. There was something about this, which was the moment in which the book suddenly became public. It was very much centered on The Order and [Nicholas Hoult’s character], using it in a way.
Do you see it as extra relevant now or evolving in its relevance from script to screen?
It’s been interesting, like, as we made it, as we’ve gone through the process of shooting it, editing it, and then getting it out there. As you said, things are changing increasingly, and the film’s relevance is becoming much more potent. Yeah. It’s not lost on me how easily it’s starting to speak to many today.
The cast is terrific. Jude and Nicholas, but even just down the line like Allison Oliver, you’ve got all these people and great roles that may not even be that big, but it’s really well cast.
I was really surprised I was able to get a great cast. As you mentioned, Allison and Odessa are playing these really important supporting roles, and Marc Maron is playing Alan Berg, who I was a massive fan of, and he’s so right as that character. And, you know, Marc understood something about Alan Berg’s career and his sort of tragic end. One of the biggest challenges when you look at a film like this is how you fill many equally important roles. And I was just super, super lucky and fortunate that I was able to kind of, across the board, get some really good people, but it also started with Jude and Nick, and those two committing to this project helped as well.
I love the cost of what it takes them. Tye Sheridan’s character says to Jude’s character at one point, “I used to think about my family all the time. Now, all I think about is this.” Obviously, Jude’s character goes way beyond that.
You see that personal costs play out through the action rather than being this kind of dense backstory. I love that about the character is that on the page didn’t read like, oh, that’s why he is who he is, that actually there was just a feeling of someone, and then through the scenes that are happening to them, you start to reveal kind of the personality of kind of who they are, and understand their type of history and experience, but also kind of what they’re heading towards in the future. But that was always a big element, which is this sort of outlier that you can feel like, you know, even the way that Jude approached it, you know, we talked about, let’s really show the weariness and the rawness and the kind of the weight and the experience of what he’s done, in the clothes and in the way you sort of move and how your face comes across on screen.
And that was important. That’s what was interesting: someone who was some kind of getting out of the city and coming to a place almost to take a breath suddenly lands in a place that probably had the hottest crime in America at the time. But also that sense of experience and that sense of isolation. He has an understanding of this group. He can feel something he connects with, not in the ideology, just in the sense of changing times.
The health aspect to it —Jude Law’s character essentially breaking down health-wise—was incredibly ambiguous in a great way. He’s got some scar on his chest. His nose is bleeding. It’s never spelled out, but it’s like this job is eating him alive.
In a lot of our research, we realized a lot of guys, a lot of FBI agents around that time, were having open heart surgeries. Their body was just shutting down. And a lot were recovering from major health scares, and we kind of love that feeling that literally had a sort of scar of where he had a type of medical kind of tragedy. And we love that sort of feeling that someone needs to tread gently because they’ve been treading pretty hard, and, yeah, those little, kind of subtle moments. We didn’t want to go into a full backstory about what it was, how it happened, and so forth. This is someone who’s paid, which was part of a lot of his frustration, motivation, and fear about who this group was and what the cost was.
What’s next? It seems like you have dozens of projects on the go. The “Mice” project with Nicole Kidman sounds fascinating, too.
I’ve got a few things brewing at the moment; I feel very productive. I really want to be on set and doing many things. In the last couple of years, I’ve done that. I’ve just finished a series with Jacob Elordi based on a wonderful Booker Prize-winning novel called “Narrow Road to the Deep North” that Amazon is doing. And I’ve also just done a couple of episodes of Netflix’s “Black Rabbit” that Jason Bateman is doing, and [‘The Order’ writer] Zach Baylin wrote, and Jude is also in it and a producer alongside Jason. I directed the last two episodes, which was fantastic; the first time I experienced being in New York and shooting, and the whole series has so much to do with sort of New York and the reality of that place and what it is.
I’m developing a horror film with Nicole and made up stories that Sean Grant, a collaborator who did “The Snowtown Murders,” “Nitram” and ‘True History of the Kelly Gang” is writing. I’ve been fascinated by the horror genre and the potential of that. I haven’t done a straight horror film before, so that’s exciting. I’m getting older now, and I feel this impatience in me to want to be on set and tell stories. I feel excited about different genres and different types of stories that speak to me.
The Order arrives in theaters on December 6 via Vertical.
