Jude Law hunts for white supremacists in Venice film 'The Order'

VENICE, Italy — Jude Law's latest movie at the Venice Film Festival, a true story of white supremacists plotting a race war, is one that "needed to be made now," its star said Saturday.

"The Order," directed by Australian director Justin Kurzel, stars the British actor as a gruff Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent in the Pacific Northwest confronted with a splinter group of the Aryan Nations, which is building a militia to wage war on the American government.

"Sadly, the relevance I think speaks for itself," Law told journalists ahead of the movie's premiere Saturday.

"It felt also like a piece of work that needed to be made now. It's always interesting looking back but it's also interesting finding a piece from the past that has some relationship to the present day," said the actor.

The film — one of 21 competing for the top Golden Lion prize at the prestigious festival — is based on the real-life group of the same name, which operated in Washington and Idaho in 1983-1984 under its leader Robert Mathews.

"What amazed me was that it was a story I hadn't heard of before," confessed Law, known for a string of leading roles, including "The Young Pope" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley."

The threat from violent, extremist far-right groups is in the forefront this year after a summer of anti-immigrant violence and riots in Britain, the worst since 2011.

There are also concerns of a repeat of the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill attack — whose rioters included white nationalists and other extremist groups — if former US President Donald Trump loses the election in November.

The 40-year-old true story provided the filmmakers with a way to "have a conversation with today's politics" given that the film is about "an ideology that’s incredibly dangerous and how it can quickly take seed," said director Kurzel.

Kurzel, whose most recent "Nitram” won a 2021 Best Actor award at Cannes for actor Caleb Landry Jones, has called his latest film "a manhunt into the depths of that hate, a foreshadowing of a divided America, a warning shot of what has been and what may come."

That hate is seen straight away at the top of the film when a Denver radio talk show host berates a caller