Justin Kurzel

The Order

03/01/24

Cineworld, Edinburgh

The geographical landscape of this film is well-known to me – a Fulbright exchange saw me teaching high school in Walla Walla, Washington for a year in the 90s, and I visited many of the Pacific Northwest locations referenced: Spokane, Boise, Couer d’Alene, Whidbey Island. Thankfully, the film’s ideological and political landscape is far less familiar.

Directed by Justin Kurzel, The Order draws on a true story from 1983, when fascist Bob Mathews (Nicholas Hoult) began his violent mission to create an all-white promised land. In Zach Baylin’s script, a fictional FBI agent called Terry Husk (Jude Law) sets out to foil Mathews’ deadly plan. It’s a chilling tale, not least because it’s clear that not much has changed in the forty years since The Order was created. There are still way too many men like Mathews, spouting their twisted doctrines. Heck, one of them has made it all the way to the White House. Twice.

Adam Arkapaw’s bleached out cinematography evokes the feel of 1980s small town America: the vast swathes of uninhabited land; the isolated homesteads. These are the neighbourhoods where cops and criminals have known each other since kindergarten, have dated the same partners, understand each other even when they disagree. So when young police officer Jamie Bowen’s old school pal, Walter, goes missing, of course he wants to help. It doesn’t matter that they’re ethically opposed – Walter (Daniel Doheny) is a white supremacist, while Jamie (Tye Sheridan) is in a mixed-race marriage – Jamie is an Idaho boy through and through; these people are his kin.

Husk, on the other hand, is an Outsider with a capital ‘O’. Haunted by past failures, he is determined to stop the rot, to prevent any more carnage. He recognises the scale of Mathews’ ambition, but it’s hard to convince anyone but Jamie that The Order poses a real danger.

The success of this film is largely due to the contrasting trio at its heart: Law’s hard-bitten desperation; Sheridan’s hopeful naïvety; Hoult’s chilling fanaticism. All three deliver superb performances, and are perfectly cast in their roles.

Kurzel doesn’t hold back from the ugliness and real-world pain. There are the chases and shoot-outs you’d expect from any crime drama, but here they feel all-too believable, the impact evident on everyone involved, from the furrows on Husk’s forehead to the manic ecstasy of Mathews’ laugh.

It’s no accident that The Order feels so timely, as we stand on the precipice of a new era in US politics. Let’s just hope that there are enough Husks and Bowens to see us through.

4.2 stars

Susan Singfield

True History of the Kelly Gang

28/02/20

True confession. When I was a much younger man, I was obsessed with the story of Ned Kelly. I read several accounts of his exploits, which gripped my imagination and, in 1970, saw Tony Richardson’s underrated biopic, which – once I got used to Mick Jagger’s alarming ‘Oirish’ accent – had me fully onboard. I even watched Heath Ledger’s fairly forgettable attempt to embody Australia’s best known folk hero in 2003. What is it about the infamous outlaw that continues to exert such a powerful hold?

In True History of the Kelly Gang (loosely based on Peter Carey’s Booker-winning novel, which I’ve also read), director Justin Kurzel doesn’t so much reinvent Kelly’s history as place a bomb under all that we know about the man and blow it to smithereens.

To give him his due, the resulting film, which is neatly divided into three chapters, is for the most part gripping. We open in the 1860s, where a young Ned (Orlando Schwert) is living in the outback in absolute squalor. He’s in thrall to his manipulative mother, Ellen (Essie Davis), who is turning tricks for the local constabulary in the shape of Sgt O’ Neil (Charlie Hunnam) in order to put food into the mouths of her children. Ned soon finds himself apprenticed to the outwardly charming bush ranger, Harry Power (an excellent Russell Crowe), and is schooled in the ways of the outlaw and the doctrines of toxic masculinity.

In the second section, the adult Ned (George Mckay) returns from a long spell in prison to find his mother still ruling the roost and living with a Californian horse thief, who has enlisted Ned’s brother into his trade. During a visit to the local brothel, Ned meets up with Constable Fitzpatrick (Nicholas Hoult) and with Mary Hearn (an underused Thomasin McKenzie), with whom he promptly falls in love. This second section is already starting to feel rather strange. Ned appears to be dressed in suspiciously contemporary style: he sports a dodgy mullet and has a predilection for writhing around half naked, like an embryonic Iggy Pop. Kurzel seems to be invoking parallels with the British punk rock movement here and images of Kelly looking suitably aggressive in front of a Union Jack reinforce this notion. Still, so far, the conceit works brilliantly.

It’s in the third section where everything becomes spectacularly unhinged. Kelly’s sudden descent into apparent madness overwhelms the material. The Kelly gang run around in dresses – seemingly a reference to groups of Irish agrarian rebels, known as The Sons of Sieve. They blacken their faces, enlist followers and launch an ill conceived attempt to attack a train full of police officers. The famous suits of armour (always, I think, the most fascinating aspect of Kelly’s story) barely get a look in. Mayhem descends but, unfortunately, so does bewilderment.

In the end, it all feels too self-consciously weird – and apparent luminosity of the ranks of police officers, appearing in the climactic gun battle, is just too opaque for comfort. While I applaud Kurzel for having the guts to take on such a revered Australian institution in so fearless a manner, I have to conclude that this feels like a bold experiment that doesn’t quite work.

3.6 stars

Philip Caveney 

Macbeth

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08/09/15

Macbeth has been filmed many times with varying degrees of success. Indeed, the story is so familiar there’s no point at all in describing what actually happens, since it is indelibly imprinted upon most people’s consciousness. Yet every single film made thus far has overlooked a really important opportunity. Macbeth and his wife need to be teenagers. Only the overbearing hubris of youth and rampant ambition can ever fully explain their actions. Of course, when you’re in the business of financing a movie, the simple truth is that you need names that will put bums on seats, so the chances are we’ll never get to see such an interpretation on the big screen. Which is a shame.

Here, Michael Fassbender gives us a grimy, muscular Macbeth, while the usually dependable Marion Cotillard struggles somewhat with her Scottish accent as his scheming wife. If you’re going to film this play, you really need to have something different up your sleeve and apart from a few neat flourishes, director Justin Kurzel doesn’t have an awful lot to offer us. He opens with the funeral of the Macbeths’ young son (something alluded to in the text but not, to my knowledge, ever shown before) and then he gives us a big slow motion battle, set against some bleak highland scenery. The witches are nicely restrained (some of their most famous lines summarily dispensed with) and from there, matters proceed at a funereal pace, with Fassbender and Cottilard reciting their lines whilst gazing into the middle distance, like actors in an Ingmar Bergman film.

It isn’t terrible, you understand, but the leaden quality rather neuters this most virile of Shakespeare’s plays, making you long to push on to the next action sequence, rather than relishing those wonderful words. There’s also a terrible misstep when Macbeth appears to discuss the assassination of Banquo (Paddy Considine) as the entire court listens in. It must have been Kurzel’s intention to do it this way, but it looks, frankly, risible.

The closing sections, in which the avenging forces set fire to, rather than transport the woods of Dunsinane, finally allow a touch of awe into the proceedings and the confrontation between Macbeth and Macduff (Sean Harris) is visceral enough to ensure this probably won’t be suitable to show in schools. There’s also a nice twist at the end involving the King’s sword – but by this time, it’s a little too late to salvage proceedings.

Advance reviews for this had led me to expect something extraordinary, but overall this felt like just another version of a tried and tested story. Decent but not a game changer.

3.5 stars

Philip Caveney