Jude Law talks his new movie: ‘A story that needed to be told’

The heightened visibility and emboldened activity of America’s white supremacist movement elevates the chilling topicality of Australian director Justin Kurzel’s “The Order,” a potent thriller and cautionary historical tale about a real-life manhunt and a 1980s Pacific Northwest hate group that committed a rash of violent heists and robberies and was tied to the murder of Denver radio host Alan Berg.

The tense “Order” stars Jude Law as Terry Husk, a fictionalized composite character inspired by a number of FBI agents. He plays a lawman battling burnout and in a cat-and-mouse pursuit  of a rogue racist group and its charismatic leader Robert Matthews (Nicholas Hoult). The search draws in another agent (Jurnee Smollett) and a savvy local cop (Tye Sheridan) and covers the Pacific Northwest, Northern California — including the outskirts of the town of Ukiah — and ultimately lands in a fiery confrontation on Washington’s Whidbey Island.

“The Order” opens Dec. 6 in theaters.

Law visited the Bay Area in October and discussed the film before appearing onstage to collect a tribute from the Mill Valley Film Festival and to talk with Program Director Zoe Elton about his decade-spanning career.

The 51-year-old actor, along with others in the cast, learned about the “The Order” from Zach Baylin’s screenplay, which is based in part on the book “The Silent Brotherhood” by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt.

“It was pretty clear from the first read that this was a story that needed to be told,” Law said during an interview in San Rafael.

“(It) lent itself in the script very nicely to a sort of cat-and-mouse thriller. And then there’s this element underneath, this sort of body underneath that really elevated it. That gave it pertinence and resonance now, the perfect combination really. And all of those potentials were highlighted by Justin. … It’s that beautiful alignment when you absolutely get the right filmmaker, the right script.”

Known for rugged, stunningly visual films that center on men driven to violence, including 2019’s “True History of the Kelly Gang,” 2021’s “Nitram” and 2015’s “Macbeth,” Kurzel was hooked by the screenplay, and then saw how it gained relevance by recent developments.

That included key scenes that show how members of “The Order” revered and were inspired by the 1978 racist, dystopian novel “The Turner Diaries,” which goes on to depict an uprising and overthrow of the U.S. government. Author William Luther Pierces’ words also have been linked to Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh as well as some involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol.

“I think it is important to understand how this book has been interpreted and how it’s been sort of taken on and how it’s been used in a way,” Kurzel said.

His initial take on the screenplay was entirely different.

“It read sort of like a heist film,” Kurzel said in a Zoom interview. “And then Jan. 6 happens and there’s like little prop nooses that are replicated there, and the ropes from ‘The Turner Diaries’ there and then someone is carrying ‘The Turner Diaries.’ You go, wow the seeds of the story are kind of still playing here.”

The film hopscotches through various locations to tell is story but due to a tight indie film budget, it got shot in parts of Calgary, Canada. In order to make the cat-and-mouse pursuit more intense and believable, Kurzel opted to separate Law and Hoult from meeting each other until shooting the pivotal sequence — one of the film’s best — where Husk first eyes Matthews in person.

Prior to filming that scene, Hoult had only met Law briefly around a decade ago. He said Kurzel’s decision to keep them apart enhanced his performance.

“Because we hadn’t spent time together, my adrenaline was pumping a little bit,” Hoult recalls over a Zoom interview. “It felt kind of like electric as opposed to if we’d been hanging out and spending a lot of time together.”

Kurzel enjoyed working with Law, who co-produced the film, and praised the actor for immersing himself into the crumbling psyche and aching body of his ready-to-break-down character.

“He was trying to come to set each day tired and kind of haggard,” Kurzel recalls. “When he was onscreen you feel the years of him being an investigator and an agent in New York.

“There was no sort of vanity,” Kurzel adds.

Two years before “The Order,” Law once again downplayed his debonair looks (applied to swoonable effect in 1999’s “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and the 2006 rom-com “The Holiday”)  to portray the uncouth and overweight Henry VIII in the indie historical drama “Firebrand,” co-starring Alicia Vikander. Law is almost unrecognizable in the physically demanding role that led to a back injury.

Beside that, he had a grand time with the part.

“One of the joys of the job is working with these incredibly talented people, whether it be in hair and makeup, costume and props, and really putting together the layers,” he said. “And a lot of it was getting the size right, the weight right and then the pain that he was in,” Law said, referring to the fact that Henry VIII was plagued with leg ulcers

To research his role as Terry Husk in “The Order,” Law talked to agents.

“I was really trying to understand their mindset and what motivated them to commit so much to these cases, and to the agency,” he said.” “That was very interesting to me, and obviously there was influence probably from watching Gene Hackman at his best. And old Paul Newman.”

While “The Order” does address white supremacy, Law hopes people consider it in the same vein as some of the work from filmmakers he admired growing up, including Sidney Lumet, William Friedkin and early Michael Mann. They were great storytellers foremost.

“I don’t think any of us involved wanted to hit people over the head with the obvious messages,” he said. “The reason we were so glad to have Justin was because he’s able to lay out a very nonjudgmental terrain and look at people and why they behave the way they do. I think that’s a healthy thing you can take away because obviously people are still behaving like that. Now we see it globally. It’s not just an American issue. It’s a global issue.”

Almost at the same time that “The Order” comes out, Law can be seen playing Jod Na Na Nawood in the eight-part Disney+ streaming series “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” — which dropped its first two episodes this week.

Entering the “Star Wars” realm is like going into hyperdrive back to when he was a little kid.

“It was a huge part of my play whether it was with the toys or running around my yard (in Blackheath, London, where his parents were school teachers) pretending to be Solo or Skywalker. It felt very familiar.”

What he prefers most about co-showrunner Jon Watts’ approach is that the main protagonists are four children.

“There’s an innocence that I think certain people of a certain age who watched it the first time around connected with that world through the eyes of wonderment and fantasy and leaping imagination,” he said. “I just thought it was a very refreshing approach to that universe and seeing the kids in it was really fun too.”

It also could open up another door for an entirely new generation to discover and then explore Law’s own galaxy of work.