An FBI hunt for white supremacists

  The Silent Brotherhood, a foray into the ranks of right-wing extremism, was written by reporters Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt. I remember the book’s 1990 publication because its authors were then co-workers of mine at The Rocky Mountain News, a now defunct Denver daily.

   Gerhardt passed away in 2015, and Flynn went to become a Denver City Council member after the News’s demise. 

  I don't know when I first heard that The Silent Brotherhood would be adapted for the screen and that it would star Jude Law, but the movie based on Flynn and Gerhardt's book -- now called The Order -- finally is reaching the nation’s theaters.

    The Order tells a story triggered by the murder of outspoken Denver talk show host Alan Berg (Marc Maron in a brief performance). I didn’t know Berg well, but I’d met him and had been on his show a couple of times, talking movies, I guess.

   Berg was gunned down in front of his Denver condo in 1984, a crime that, in The Order, becomes the catalyst for a penetrating look at the criminal activities of violent neo-Nazis operating in the Pacific Northwest during the 1980s, often supporting themselves by robbing banks.

  Australian director Justin Kurzel takes a no-frills approach to a true crime story with frightening political implications, providing insight into people attracted to the furthest corners of the American far right. 

  Law plays Terry Husk, an FBI agent who’s drawn into the investigation when he’s assigned to an office in a remote corner of Washington state. He’s had big cases in New York and elsewhere, but seems to be on the downside of his career.

  Law creates a character who's worn, dogged, and sad. But he perseveres.

  Tye Sheridan plays Jamie Bowden, a local cop who knows some of the gang members from when they were kids. Bowden serves as a guide for Husk; in return, he's schooled by Husk in the ways of cops who know the ropes.

   Jurnee Smollett joins the cast as another FBI agent who contributes to the investigation, a fraught task for a Black woman working to bring white supremacists to justice.

  Set during the 1980s, The Order finds its principal outlaw in neo-Nazi Bob Matthews, played with charisma by Nicholas Hoult, soon to be seen in Nosferatu. 

   Matthews, who founded a group called The Order, relies on his likability and persuasiveness to attract others to his foul cause. He creates a sense of belonging among his followers, a brotherhood of the disaffected united by bonds of hatred for the federal government and anyone who isn't white.

   Bombings, an armored truck heist, and other violent incidents light the movie’s action spark; they're part of The Order's disruptive tactics, some motivated by their obsession with The Turner Diaries, a 1978 novel and white supremacist influencer.

   Not every supremacist believes in Matthews's approach. At one point, Richard Butler (Victor Slezak), the head of the Aryan Nations, tries to control Bowden, who he views as a dangerous rogue. Butler comes off as a neo-Nazi institutionalist who’s willing to bide his time.

  The Order has been classified as a crime thriller. Heaven knows, we've seen plenty of them. But in a divided, fearful country, The Order acquires renewed  urgency. It has been 40 years since Matthews died in a fiery confrontation with the FBI. I wish his story felt more like a footnote than a precursor. 

This gang battles long odds

The True History of the Kelly Gang is a bit of a jumble, but it's not easy to shake off.

A man-child sprung from an abusive boyhood, Ned Kelly became an outlaw legend in Australia. Kelly also became the subject of author Peter Carey’s Booker Prize-winning novel, The True History of the Kelly Gang, source of a wild-ass movie of the same name.

Working in an appropriately feverish style, director Justin Kurzel has made a movie that’s difficult to digest — and maybe that’s its greatest virtue. Kurzel's "true history" brims with stylistic embellishment, unvarnished brutality, and unfocused passion.

As the adult Kelly, George Mackay (1917) gives a scowling, fiery performance. Mackay's Kelly is pushed into violence through a mixture of what might be psychopathy, conviction, and horrible circumstances. Like many of the Irish in British-ruled Australia of the mid-19th century, Kelly was born into an oppressive, impoverished world.

Among his many peculiarities, Kelly wore a bulletproof helmet — inspired by pictures he’d seen of the USS Monitor. His gang sometimes dressed in … well … dresses. Like the western outlaws he resembled, Kelly thrilled and terrorized.

All of this can seem strange to American audiences who either haven’t read Kelly’s novel or are otherwise unfamiliar with Kelly whose life was a study in brutality — both of the rough terrain on which he lived and the violent behavior to which he was driven.

Kurzel doesn’t so much plumb psychological depths as he carries on a flirtation with the motivations of his characters. Kelly loved his mother (Essie Davis), but she had strange ways of returning his love. While still a boy (played by Orlando Schwerdt), Kelly was sold by his mother to an outlaw, Russell Crowe’s Harry Power. Power became a kind of surrogate father to Kelly, whose real father died after serving a prison sentence. Kelly was 12 at the time.

Power alternately introduces the boy to the high life (steak dinners) while encouraging his brutality. Power accepted no one who couldn’t, as he put it, “pull the trigger.”

Looking bearded, thick and unkempt, Crowe appears in an early chapter of the story. When Power vanishes from the screen, Crowe's absence is felt, but not before he reminds us of how good he can be.

The duplicities of the British are deeply ingrained in a British constable (Nicholas Hoult). Kelly's romantic life, such as it was, focuses on a prostitute portrayed by Thomasin McKenzie. Another British officer (Charlie Hunnam) sexually harasses Kelly’s mother in the movie’s early going, part of the movie's attempts to show the strange intimacies between oppressors and the oppressed.

To his credit, Kurzel likes to blur lines. We don’t always know whether to feel sorry for Kelly or be revolted by him. Crowe’s character is down-to-earth but homicidal, and Kelly’s mother proves a mass of contradictory impulses: Love and cruelty among them.

I wasn’t tempted to spend much time researching the real Kelly and the film begins with a wink that subverts any need for pinpoint accuracy. Nothing you’re about to see is true,” we’re informed by a title card.

Kurzel’s feverish approach often left me bleary-eyed, but the director and his cast have hold of something weird, raw, and gripping, a subject they either couldn’t or didn’t want to contain. But even when we don’t quite know what to make of The True History, it's difficult to turn away.