Justin Kurzel's film offers a deeply authentic and thrilling look at the roots of a movement that has only grown more dangerous and relevant.

By Owen Gleiberman

There’s a scene in “The Order,” a riveting, explosive docudrama about the rise of the modern American white supremacist movement in the 1980s, that is as enlightening as it gets. Two leaders of the movement meet on a remote Idaho road. One of them, Richard Butler (Victor Slezak), is the white nationalist who founded the Aryan Nations, the neo-Nazi cult that has its compound nearby. He’s a racist extremist, but he has the demeanor of a gentlemanly preacher and is deliberately political about the growth of his movement.

The other man, Bob Matthews (Nicholas Hoult), is a former follower of Butler's who split from him, all because he thinks the Aryan Nations movement isn't extreme enough. Matthews now wants an armed uprising, and the insurgent gang of thugs he leads, the Order (he named them after the white supremacist revolutionaries in "The Turner Diaries"), are actually a small, sleazy band of terrorists. They bomb porno theaters and synagogues, don black ski masks and carry MAC-10 submachine guns to rob banks and Brink's trucks. They want the money for themselves, but they're also funding an "army" to rebel against the United States government. (A single robbery of Brink's nets them $3.6 million.) In an early scene, we see them murder one of their own in cold blood.