The Order true story: Jude Law explains changes made to his character

And Law – who also serves as a producer on the film – instantly knew that Kurzel was the right match for this material.

"What he does so well is, I think, find a kind of human perspective," he explained during an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com.

"He doesn't take the easy route of sort of casting characters in, you know, good guy, bad guy. He did the same in Nitram. He did the same in Snowtown Murders.

"He looks instead at community and family. And he talked a lot about this, how he loves to look at the way people behave with the people around them. And how does that inform you, how does that enable you or empower you?"

But is The Order based on a true story? Read on for everything you need to know.

The Order true story

The film is absolutely based on a true story, and Bob Matthews himself was very much a real figure – a neo-Nazi activist who was the leader of the white supremacist militant group from which the film takes his name.

As is depicted in the film, he died in a burning building after the FBI caught on to his plan to orchestrate a violent and deeply racist revolution in the US.

Speaking to RadioTimes.com, Law explained: "The source material for the story was a book called The Silent Brotherhood, which is written by a couple of journalists from Denver [Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt] who put together an incredibly detailed breakdown of the procedure that the FBI followed."

Where the more fictionalised element comes in relates to Law's own character Terry Husk. There was no real FBI agent with that name, and so most of the scenes involving his family life and exchanges with Bob are invented for the film – but screenwriter Zach Baylin nonetheless drew from several real sources when creating the character.

"The skeleton of the character was very much in the original draft I read, and Zach had already made the choice to amalgamate the Husk character," Law explained

"We drew a lot on one of the agents that really solved this case who had had a very similar career to Terry," he added.

"But it felt more tasteful to sort of change his name and give us the opportunity to draw on some of the other agents and also add our own embellishments, so that we could kind of conduct the story through Husk without, you know, upsetting or embarrassing anyone.

"And what that meant was we could layer in this sort of damaged past, this physical damage, and better, sort of set him up, tee him up as a comparison to Bob."

One aspect of the film which is completely taken from real life was Matthews's obsession with the extremist 1978 novel The Turner Diaries, which served as the inspiration behind his planned insurrection – containing within it a six-step blueprint for overthrowing the government.

"I looked at The Turner Diaries [and] the shameful thing about The Turner Diaries is it's like a kid's book," Law explained.

"I mean, it's really pretty basic. It's sort of step one, step two... and it just tells you, in a very sort of layman term, how to follow it. So there wasn't an awful lot to be learned from it.

"To be really honest, my sort of obsession lent more into Bob Matthews and his behaviour and his past."

At the end of the film, a post-script claims that the continued dangerous legacy of The Turner Diaries can be directly linked to the 6th January US Capitol insurrection in 2021, and indeed there are many ways in which it is easy to draw parallels between the events of the film and the modern day.

But Law said that they didn't think too deeply about those parallels when making the film.

"Our attention had to be telling this story honestly, accurately and plausibly," he said. "The through lines, the comparisons to what's happening now, kind of took care of themselves.

"And in fact, the script had been written before the 2021 January 6th insurrection. So, you know, it was clear that we were on to something that had relevance, but we didn't need to necessarily lean on that."

The Order is now showing in UK cinemas.

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