Directed by Justin Kurzel | Written by Zach Baylin, based on the book by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt | 116 min |  | ▲▲▲1/2 | Prime 

This is a based-on-real-events crime drama from Australian hyphenate Kurzel, maybe best known in North America for his version of Macbeth with Michael Fassbender, or the video game adaptation Assassins Creed, though since he’s also delivered The True History of The Kelly Gang, which didn’t impress. This, however, is an exceedingly capable genre effort.

The Order is a procedural and thriller in the mode of Zodiac, telling the story of a cadre of midwestern white supremacists in the 1980s who planned and executed bank robberies to fund their militia efforts. Led by a true-believer named Bob Mathews (an impressive Nicholas Hoult), they murdered prominent DJ Alan Berg (Marc Maron) in Denver. Terry Husk (a grizzled Jude Law sporting a walrus moustache) is a longtime FBI agent who’s been relocated to the country, but then sees signs of this white supremacist group. He teams up with a fellow agent, Joanne Carney (Jurnee Smollett), and a small town deputy, Jamie Bowen (Tye Sheridan), while he’s trying to keep his head and health together — his wife and daughters who were to follow him out, they never show up.

This is a really good-looking picture — Kurzel and his semi-regular DP, Adam Arkapaw, do a terrific job building mood in the interiors with muted blues and reds, making the best of the Alberta locations in the exteriors, the era accentuated in the costumes, cars, colours, and cigarettes. A humming, doom-y score from Jed Kurzel helps drive home the sense of swirling conspiracy and threat from these self-righteous American Nazi assholes.

Not all of this is unimpeachable. The times when the movie dips into Bob Mathews’ home life, how he controls his wife (Alison Oliver) and  his pregnant girlfriend (Odessa Young) doesn’t do either relationship much justice. The themes of masculinity, around hunting, the effort to provide some kind of parallel between Mathews and Husk, some of that feels more from a movie that would’ve been made in the ’80s, not just set there.

The cost of the patriarchal attitudes, however, that stuff rings true. A scene where Husk wipes his hands in the dirt, trying to clean off the lifeblood of a man he inspired to be reckless, that’s powerful stuff. Mostly the film does resonate, not only due to the professionalism of all involved, but due to how it terrifyingly presents the brutality of this fascist cult. It’s way too familiar.