By – Gareth Jones

For fans of the Blue Tongue Collective, Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris, intense true-crime films

Written and directed by Thomas Wright, The Stranger is an astonishing film.  I must admit that I was attracted to the film by the two lead actors, Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris, both of whom’s careers I have followed closely.  Here, the direction and writing gives these two incredible actors a stage to show what they can do, and boy do they do that in a deeply moving, disturbing, and thought-provoking way.

Set in Edgerton’s native Australia, the film is based on the true story of a young boy who is abducted and killed and the hunt for the killer. The Stranger focuses on the attempts of the police to get a confession from their number one suspect Henry Teague, played to the bone by Sean Harris.  He is masterful in the way that he pulls us in and makes us feel empathy for his character while still showing how terrifying he is.  The police have created a massive operation where they initially have one undercover officer who befriends Teague on a bus, who then hands him off to a group of underground criminals who can promise that they can help Teague remove his old identity and give him a new one.  Facilitating this is another undercover cop, Mark Frame, portrayed brilliantly by Joel Edgerton.  Frame is battling neutrality in this case as he has a young son of his own that he is deeply connected to, and as he mentors Teague into the underground criminal group he builds a genuine friendship with him. Frame must maintain this friendship whilst trying to create a situation where Teague will confess to the crime.  The tension of this is a master class in genre filmmaking.

This is the crux of the film and why it is such a devastatingly powerful experience.  We connect with both characters slowly through small but extremely effective devices.  We see Frame struggling with parenting as an undercover officer. He tries his best to mask his pain and struggles, but it manifests in many ways in front of his son and in his dreams.  These dream sequences are some of the most disturbing in recent memory.  Teague gets his moments as well, one particularly potent scene is when he finally invites Frame into his remote house and asks him to listen to his favorite Icehouse song.  His desperation for human connection is palpable.  It is an incredible combination of acting, direction, cinematography, and production design.  It does not have any of the irony of a Huey Lewis and American Psycho. It shows the need for all humans to connect and the power of music to do this.  The manner in which Teague slowly starts to mimic and imitate Frame is realistic, and unnerving because of this.  Harris becomes this character in every fashion, from the way he speaks, the way he walks, and the way he dresses.

Before directing films, Wright began as a theater co-founder and actor with a troupe called Black Lung. He went on to have several powerful performances in film and television including a role in Top of the Lake by Jane Campion, who described him as an “Australian Daniel Day-Lewis”, high praise from one of the best living directors.  He obviously learned much in this process because his direction and writing here are sensational. He has given two of the world’s best performers a place to create and collaborate.  It is a film that did not get enough attention when it was released due to the pandemic, and I will certainly be following his career to see what he does next.

Available to stream on Netflix