The Order

I saw this last night, December 17, 2024. An action/thriller based on true events. An FBI agent investigates a series of robberies which turns out to be organized by a neo-nazi group led by Bob Matthews (a real life figure). I was interested to see this because the real events took place in the Pacific Northwest, where I live. If you didn't know, the urban areas of the Pacific Northwest lean liberal, but the rural areas are a haven for far right extremist groups, and there are a lot of nazi-types who move to eastern Oregon and Idaho specifically to try to start communes or militias. Bob Matthews was one of them, who tried to start both a commune and a militia in the 80's.

This movie definitely falls into the trope of the main male cop-type character who has been through some trauma and is largely stoic and unable to express and process his emotions, except with occasional outbursts of anger. These kind of character arcs tend to disinterest me. If I can't see someone's emotions on screen, then it becomes hard to be immersed. Indeed, I found myself checking my phone a few times to see how much time was left in the movie. However, there was a side character that was more compelling for me than the stoic main character, and even nearly brought me to tears at one point. In fact, this movie, even though it ends with the "good guys" largely winning, the film to me reads as a tragedy which is at least somewhat novel to me for an action thriller. The main character (I can't even remember his name now) has seen so much violence at the hands of organized crime that he becomes obsessed with stopping it, even to the point of putting people he cares about in danger. Because of this obsession, he does eventually stop the crime organization, but at the cost of hurting the people he loves. Was it worth it? Probably not, just like the movie itself probably isn't worth it. Please give me a compelling character who actually learns from his mistakes, or at the very least, one that I can see is visibly tormented by these character flaws instead of bottling up his emotions presumably forever after the movie ends.

However, the movie was certainly watchable, and the few action scenes did in fact have me at the edge of my seat. There was blood and gore, which I tend to not like, but I felt it enhanced the story, and wasn't there just to evoke a reaction for no reason. The acting was good, and the characters were likeable, though I would have liked to see them be a bit more dynamic. As far as I could tell, the movie followed real events relatively closely, at least matching the Wikipedia page for Bob Matthews. There were several times towards the end that I just had to laugh as I was brought out of immersion by how events went down. 

Overall, 3 out of 5 stars. Wouldn't recommend, wouldn't see again, but wouldn't leave the room if it were playing.