Spoilers follow for The Order, now streaming on Hulu.
Just like a movie is more than its plot, a perfect performance is more than line deliveries. And in the particular case of The Order, Justin Kurzel’s ’80s-set film about an FBI agent chasing a band of bank-robbing white separatists as they plan a takeover of the United States, that perfect performance comes from a mustache: Jude Law’s bushy marvel of Yosemite Sam–evoking character design, which smears blood, soaks up beer, absorbs cigarette smoke, and tells viewers everything they need to know about Agent Terry Husk. Yes, the mustache is really Law’s, and yes, it’s spectacular.
The wonderful thing about Law’s mustache in Kurzel’s “Heat with white supremacists” thriller is not its sheer existence. Law has rocked ’staches before: a skinny little slash above his lip when he played Errol Flynn in The Aviator, a thicker curve as Dr. Watson in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes films, a mustache and beard as Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin in Joe Wright’s underrated Anna Karenina adaptation. But none of these mustaches explain their characters quite as well as Agent Husk’s does. Husk’s face is covered in a caterpillar-like expanse of hair because he can’t be bothered to keep up with it. He’s got more important stuff to do, like shame local police for letting neo-Nazis publicly advertise around town and convince his FBI colleagues this case is worth pursuing. His ’stache is a visual representation of his commitment to the job. And Law’s commitment to the ’stache is an essential play against type.
Law’s hotness ruining people’s lives is cinema canon. (See: The Talented Mr. Ripley, Closer, Spy, and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.) In The Order, though, Law uses that mustache — which he grew for the role because he said every FBI agent he met while doing research had one — to help mask that beauty. It’s not just the look of the thing, which is so bristly and thick that it hides his top lip and is shaped with a distinct downward angle that gives Law the illusion of a perpetual frown. It’s how the mustache animates Law’s face.
The mustache adds sardonic amusement and beleaguered exhaustion to practically everything he says. When Law’s Husk, newly arrived in Idaho to investigate the white-supremacist threat, first questions the Kootenai County sheriff and learns that the man hasn’t been taking the group seriously, Husk raises his chin like a challenge, the mustache punctuating his disdain. Later, the man Husk is chasing, Bob Mathews (Nicholas Hoult), follows him to a hunting ground and insults Husk’s chain-smoking, suggesting his smell keeps the elk away. Law reacts first with squinting surprise, then genuine amusement, a split-second transformation emphasized by the stretch of mustache complementing his wide smile.
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The highlight of all this ’stache-in-the-spotlight acting comes in a third-act moment that pays off the earlier reveal that Husk is prone to nosebleeds when he’s stressed. As Husk questions one of Mathews’s imprisoned allies, shoving his face into the guy’s chest and threatening to “lean on you so hard,” the interrogation triggers a gush of blood. It soaks into Husk’s mustache, drips onto his shirt, and smears all over the horrified Tony Torres (Matias Lucas); when Husk leans back in the prison cell to light yet another cigarette and continue questioning Torres, the gunky mustache gives him a hangdog air, like he’s a clinically depressed, overworked Muttley who would chuckle at the absurdity of all this if it didn’t involve him.
Law’s got other makeup and costuming tools at his disposal to convey Husk’s killing-himself-for-the-job mania. His widow’s peak is perhaps the most pronounced it’s ever been; he’s got a scar on his chest suggesting surgery after a heart attack; the tighty-whities in which Husk walks around his lonely motel room are wrinkled and faded. Why bother trying to impress anyone? His family’s gone, the voice-mails he leaves for them unanswered. In their absence, Law plays Husk as both a chain-smoker and a voracious gum-chewer, someone with such abundant energy that without those physical outlets, he’d somehow be even more jittery. That constant gnawing and sucking and puffing and chomping are all tension generators and all bring the focus back to Husk’s facial hair, the accessory that conveys how resigned the character is to his own recklessness. Husk has had, and will continue to have, many partners in chasing criminals. But no one will ever know him as well as that mustache.
