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The Stranger review – Joel Edgerton is at his brooding best in this sophisticated crime drama

Thomas M Wright’s unconventional, captivating film sees Edgerton as an undercover cop trying to identify a child murderer, opposite the brilliant Sean Harris

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A creeping sense of dread permeates the second feature film of writer/director Thomas M Wright, who burst out the gates with Acute Misfortune in 2018, which was not just a great biopic (of the artist Adam Cullen), but one of the best Australian films of the decade . The Stranger has a texture reminiscent of films by fellow Australian filmmaker Justin Kurzel, particularly Snowtown and Nitram , with scaled-back colour schemes, compositions that are stylised – but never flashy – and graded in a slightly off-colour way, as if the characters have stained the surface of the film, contaminating it from the inside.

Our narrative pathway into this sophisticated, meditative picture is via Henry (Sean Harris), an ex-con and drifter who meets a stranger, Paul (Steve Mouzakis), on a bus; cinematographer Sam Chiplin creates a surreal theatricality by blackening out the space around them. Paul tells Henry he knows where he can find some work – not of the legal kind – and soon Henry has entered the web of Mark (Joel Edgerton), an undercover police officer posing as a mid-level gangster. The film spends a lot of time with Mark and Henry, and you’re not sure what either man is capable of.

The Stranger is a “cracking the case” narrative, pulling us into the mission to identify the kidnapper and murderer of a boy who went missing several years ago. A full picture of the operation gradually emerges; for a long time it’s not exactly clear who the suspect is, or even the nature of the case. Wright was inspired by the real-life investigation to find the man who murdered 13-year-old Daniel Morcombe, whose family have spoken out against this film . However, Morcombe is not named, and neither the boy nor the crime are depicted. If viewers went in cold, it’s unlikely they would connect the film to real-life events.

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Among its unconventional elements is the use of Edgerton’s character as a means to examine trauma, which is more often depicted as being experienced by victims, and sometimes their communities, but rarely cops. The Stranger is different: Mark’s anguish over his work feels terribly real, and this creates a captivating psychological energy that washes over everything. It’s hard to pull off a good dream sequence but Wright – who has a great knack for making characters feel stranded inside themselves – helms more than one, blurring the inner world with the outer, and pulling us deeper into Mark’s mind.

The performances are crucial. Edgerton is at his best with a brooding, gloomy performance, exploring the dark ramifications of undercover work in a way that feels fresh and intensely captivating. He’s one of those famous actors who seems to have no problem disappearing into unglamorous characters; his role choices, in fact, seem partly engineered to avoid glamour entirely. Harris, meanwhile, is almost too good, almost too convincing as Henry, who you wouldn’t want to encounter in a dark laneway.

Wright’s stylistic flourishes use cinematic expression without removing us from the reality of the picture. White lines in the middle of a road provide visual rhythm in one scene; in another, after Henry and Mark meet, the camera remains in the car transporting them, but cuts from day to night, condensing time. Behind the back shots, removing the face as a reference point, are carefully used. The Stranger avoids both neat explanations and contrived ambiguity, when narrative pieces are shuffling around to confuse audiences.

Speaking purely in terms of police genre stories, there is a scene, about 30 minutes before the end (no spoilers) that I haven’t seen the likes of before: certainly not on this level, with everything coming together at once, and with so much weight behind it all. The plot event in question dramatically registers, but there’s a mood, a tone, an intangible energy that takes it somewhere else, swelling the joints of the film and rattling the bones of the characters and the audience. By that point, it’s abundantly clear that The Stranger has crept, assiduously, into brilliance; to call it an unconventionally impressive crime drama is to put it very lightly.

The Stranger is currently screening as part of the 2022 Melbourne international film festival . It will have a theatrical release in Australia in October 2022, before getting a global release on Netflix that month.

• Melbourne international film festival
• Australian film
• Crime films
• Joel Edgerton

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The Stranger

Sean Harris has always had a fascinating screen presence, one that’s slightly unstable and unsettling. He swallows some lines in a half-whisper and makes great use of a hollow, vacant stare. There’s something haunted about the characters he plays. And he makes great use of that skill set in Thomas M. Wright ’s taut and effective “The Stranger,” which premiered at Cannes back in May and snuck its way onto Netflix last week with almost zero promotion or fanfare. It’s worth seeking out.

Harris plays Henry Teague, a man who the first few scenes set up as the protagonist of this Aussie true story only to then turn the tables. Mild spoilers will follow, so come back later if you know absolutely nothing about one of the largest undercover operations in the history of Australia, but this is a film that settles early into a procedural investigation of a vicious criminal. It turns out that Henry is the main suspect in one of the most notorious missing person cases in the history of Australia, and he’s being pulled through the film into a massive sting operation to finally put him away.

It starts with what Henry thinks is a random encounter with a man on a bus who offers him an opportunity. At first, it seems like Henry is about to get involved in a criminal underworld that could get him in serious trouble. He keeps asserting that he doesn’t “do violence,” but agrees to meet some mysterious people, including one named Mark Frame ( Joel Edgerton ), who is actually an undercover cop. Mark gets closer to Henry even as it’s revealed that everything that’s happening is really a set-up to trap a man who the authorities are convinced has murdered a child. It’s a brilliant operation, one that basically places a criminal into an amoral enterprise, relying on the fact that he will be so comfortable within it that he will say or do something that will incriminate him, especially to the criminal higher-ups who will demand to know everything about his background. (It’s also worth noting that a confession obtained this way is legal in Australia and wouldn’t be in the United States.)

Wright, who also wrote the film based on the book The Sting: The Undercover Operation That Caught Daniel Morcombe’s Killer , deftly moves back and forth between the growing connection between Henry & Mark and the other aspects of the investigation by Mark’s colleagues, including an effective Jada Alberts as the lead detective. Working with editor Simon Njoo , Wright assembles a film that’s largely straightforward but cut together in a way that makes it more unsettling. There are startling jump cuts and dream sequences that get under your skin, conveying how befriending a child killer could destroy someone from within. Oliver Coates ’ score also works to alter our perception of the crime drama elements, making the whole thing more like a waking nightmare than an episode of “Criminal Minds.”

The craft elements of “The Stranger” are enabled by the character work of Edgerton and Harris, who very purposefully share a mumbling beard aesthetic. These men are supposed to be similar in body language and appearance, not only so Henry will open up to Mark but to make the detective’s journey into the dark side more terrifying. He doesn’t have to become a monster like Mark, but he has to befriend one, and Edgerton expertly conveys the fractures that would create in one’s psyche, making one almost a stranger to himself.

Netflix has an increasingly bad habit of burying projects, notoriously making them hard to find on the home screen even on the day they’re released. “The Stranger” seems to be breaking through as it’s ranked in the top ten over the weekend since its release. It’s nice to see something worthwhile break through the crowd of familiar faces.

On Netflix now.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

• Joel Edgerton as Mark
• Sean Harris as Henry Teague
• Jada Alberts as Detective Rylett
• Fletcher Humphrys as Detective Ikin
• Mike Foenander as Heavy Man
• Steve Mouzakis as Paul
• Simon Elrahi as Lieutenant
• Alan Dukes as John
• Oliver Coates

Cinematographer

• Sam Chiplin
• Thomas M. Wright

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‘The Stranger’ Review: Joel Edgerton Loses Himself in This Dark Australian Thriller’s Many Layers

Talented Australian helmer Thomas M. Wright ('Acute Misfortune') tackles another true story of befriending the devil.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Who knew that police sting operations did — or even could — work like the one seen in “ The Stranger ”? Based on the extensive Mr. Big ruse that brought a notorious Australian kidnapper to justice, this eerie, understated thriller draws the audience into the same deception used to ensnare the culprit, focusing on psychology more than procedure in its entrancing account of a most unusual criminal investigation. The case echoes Denis Villeneuve’s “Prisoners” at times, minus the twisted genre-movie payoff, which will limit commercial prospects beyond Oz shores.

With a tortured performance by producer-star Joel Edgerton at its core, this second feature from gifted actor-turned-helmer Thomas M. Wright is as much about befriending the devil as his terrific 2018 debut, “Acute Misfortune,” was. (That film re-created the moth-to-flame portrait of a self-destructive bad-boy artist by an easily manipulated young journalist. Here, an undercover cop must cozy up to an unrepentant human monster.) Premiering in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, “The Stranger” confirms that Wright has arrived, even if his treatment sometimes feels more oblique and self-consciously arty than the material demands.

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Pretty much everyone in Australia knows the case of Daniel Morcombe, the 13-year-old boy who disappeared from a Queensland bus stop. Like last year’s Cannes competition entry “Nitram,” about the country’s worst mass shooting, downplaying the crime itself is a way of depriving the real-world perpetrator of the toxic brand of tabloid celebrity that American media and movies so often confer upon evildoers. But the tactic doesn’t erase the evil itself, while non-Australian audiences may be left somewhat confused by the omission of key information.

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Here, for instance, Wright never reveals how the police identified “Henry” (Sean Harris) as the prime suspect in a nationwide manhunt. As far as we’re concerned, he’s just a weary, working-class drifter we meet on the bus at the same time a guy named Paul (Steve Mouzakis) does. These two travelers hit it off, then go out for drinks. Paul tells Henry he has a lead on some work, and sensing that it might not be entirely legal, Henry quickly volunteers, “I don’t do violence.”

Neither does Wright, it turns out. The director resists the temptation to show whatever darkness Henry is hiding, working instead to suggest the unknowability of another man’s soul. Ergo, “The Stranger” becomes an exercise in mood, as characters tend to be seen in shadow, from a distance or with their backs to the camera, while poker-faced expressions mask their emotions.

A few scenes in, the far-from-exploitative film’s point of view shifts dramatically, from Henry to the rough, bearded guy — another stranger (Edgerton), this one named Mark — who picks him up for the job the next day. At this point, viewers are still getting their bearings, letting their imaginations run wild based on limited information. “Trust Mark,” Paul tells Henry. “If you’re honest with these guys, you’ll be looked after.” Trust is a key theme in “The Stranger.”

Edgerton has played criminals before, of course, perhaps most memorably in 2010’s “Animal Kingdom,” and here, we’re invited to wonder what kind of man his character is. Not at all the one the movie first suggests, it turns out. Mark is decent, but not without demons of his own. The film follows him home … to his son, whom Mark has been raising by himself. He’s an undercover cop, it turns out, who spends his days embedded in some kind of mob-like organization. It’s not easy to shake that persona when he’s off the clock — as if he’s ever truly off the clock — and so he unwittingly takes it out on his kid.

Meanwhile, his job is to win Henry’s confidence, to extract a confession. Everything else is a lie, an elaborate charade by which to entrap Henry — who isn’t Henry at all, but a man named Peter Worley. But how do you get a man who won’t assume his own guilt to unburden his conscience to a man he barely knows? Already, this review has said more than it should about “The Stranger’s” secrets, which are best discovered as they unfold. The impact will be inevitably diluted for those who don’t know the backstory of the Morcombe case, since Sean Harris, the wild-eyed English actor who plays Henry/Peter, comes across as a sympathetic character at first (audiences might think otherwise if they knew what he’d done).

In the U.S., U.K. and several other countries, the police can’t use such schemes to elicit a confession, which makes the whole film — adapted from Kate Kyriacou’s rigorously reported book, “The Sting” — a compelling illustration of how the resource-intensive strategy worked in Australia. (It’s no small thing to invent a fictional criminal organization just to ensnare one man.) There’s a simultaneously fascinating and frightening stretch in which the cops have the testimony they need but not the evidence to prove it in court.

The final scene of “The Stranger” follows Mark home, and the point of view shifts again, this time to his son as he studies the effect the investigation has had on his dad. That’s a strange way for Wright to wrap a movie that, like “Zodiac,” leaves its detectives transformed by the experience, effectively making the case that seeing the human side of evil changes a person — which of course, is what Wright intends for his movie to do to us as well.

Reviewed at Club 13, Paris, May 12, 2022. In Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard). Running time: 117 MIN.

• Production: (Australia) A Screen Australia presentation, in association with South Australian Film Corp., Screen NSW, Cross City Films, Trinity Media Financing Intl., Rocket Science, of a See-Saw Films, Anonymous Content, Blue Tongue Films production. Producers: Rachel Gardner, Emile Sherman, Iain Canning, Joel Edgerton, Kerry Kohansky-Roberts, Kim Hodgert. Executive producers: Simon Gillis, Thorsten Schumacher, Lars Sylvest, Morgan Emmery, Jean-Charles Levy. Co-producers: Libby Sharpe, Alexandra Taussig.
• Crew: Director, writer: Thomas M. Wright, based on the book “The Sting” by Kate Kyriacou. Camera: Sam Chiplin. Editor: Simon Njoo Ase. Music: Oliver Coates.
• With: Joel Edgerton, Sean Harris, Jada Alberts, Steve Mouzakis.

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‘the stranger’: film review | cannes 2022.

Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris star in Thomas M. Wright's contemporary true crime-based drama set in Outback Australia about low-level gangsters who are not all they seem.

By Leslie Felperin

Leslie Felperin

Contributing Film Critic

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Actor-turned-writer-director Thomas M. Wright, whose feature debut Acute Misfortune impressed many in 2018, utilizes a true-crime plot to sift through a stylish but sometimes ponderous meditation on male bonding, trust and identity in The Stranger . Pivoting around a high-intensity exhibition bout of chameleonic mimicry, mumbling and beard-growing from character actors Joel Edgerton (also a producer here) and Sean Harris , the film offers a fictionalized portrait of the massive undercover operation that cracked the infamous cold case of 13-year-old Daniel Morcombe, who went missing in 2003.

Assembled with seemingly deliberate disjointed editing that scrambles the time line, and shot through with unsettling shock cuts backed by Oliver Coates discordant, droning minimalist score, The Stranger definitely feels like an elevated genre exercise — more challenging than the average crime drama but also more interesting.

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Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard) Cast: Joel Edgerton, Sean Harris, Ewen Leslie, Steve Mouzakis, Jada Alberts, Fletcher Humphrys, Alan Dukes, Simon Elrahi, Matthew Sunderland, Cormac Wright Director-screenwriter: Thomas M. Wright, based on Kate Kyriacou’s book The Sting: The Undercover Operation That Caught Daniel Morcombe’s Killer

Wright’s twisty, braided screenplay only gradually reveals the full picture of what’s going on, and lays much more emphasis on investigative procedure rather than the crime itself. Indeed, we never even meet the young victim at the center of the story, making him almost literally a chalk outline or a cardboard cutout who sets the plot in motion in the backstory.

Some viewers may find this a bit problematic as it ends up placing the killer as the subject of the story, or at least one of its main protagonists alongside the policeman hunting him down. That said, the director has cast his own son, Cormac Wright, as the child of Edgerton’s character Mark, amplifying the theme of parental anxiety, especially when the kid goes missing very briefly at one point.

In Australia, where the Morcombe story was a lead news item for years, the film will play very differently because viewers will go in aware of some of the key details. But for offshore audiences, mostly coming in cold, a general sense of the narrative’s direction will be indecipherable for a good stretch of the running time. Moreover, there’s a crucial legal detail that perhaps could be explained in a postscript, especially for the benefit of American, British and some European viewers. [Warning, spoilers ahead from this point on.]

The plot to unmask the killer depends on eliciting a confession from him using a massive fake criminal organization that demands the suspect reveal his darkest secrets in order to join the outfit, which is actually manned by undercover cops themselves.

The approach was first developed by the Royal Mounties in British Columbia, thus earning it the nickname the Canadian technique, also known as the Mr. Big technique. (No relation to Sex and the City .) However, in the States, the U.K. and many other places, confessions obtained this way aren’t admissible in court, so crime-genre fans in those territories, precisely the audience most inclined to see this, are likely to feel a bit baffled by the big reveal, and that could dampen word-of-mouth enthusiasm. This is a case of a film that’s actually improved if you know the spoilers beforehand, especially the fact that the Canadian technique is permissible in Australia.

In that light, The Stranger almost becomes a secret parable about the dangers of Method acting, of getting in too deep to a role. Everyone is essentially lying here, apart from Mark’s sweet-natured little boy. That’s particularly true of Harris’ lean, lushly bearded drifter Henry, who is first met arriving by bus in a southern Outback town.

En route, he meets Paul (Steve Mouzakis), who by subtle clues connects to Henry through a shared identity as ex-cons. He offers to set him up with a job working for local hard man Mark, who is also not what he seems. Once hired, Mark and Henry are teamed up for a number of deliveries of vaguely defined illicit items. The possibility of climbing the criminal ladder is dangled in front of Henry as long as he promises to come clean to the big boss about anything he may have done in the past that might get the organization in trouble.

This near-metaphysical meditation on truth-telling is laced up with a police operation going on in the background, one that involves, among others, Jada Alberts, practically the only female character in the film, as a detective investigating the case of the missing child.

Only gradually do all the storylines fuse together, including the strand involving Mark’s domestic situation, but the payoff is somehow a little flat. That may have to do with how effectively the film channels the monosyllabic, working-class Australian machismo of the “ocker” sensibility, which favors short sharp grunts over dialogue and — clearly a bylaw for nearly all Australian films starting from Walkabout in 1971 — a scene where a car is set on fire.

Fortunately, both Harris and Edgerton are past masters of this kind of performance. Given their physical resemblance, enhanced by hair growth and costuming, watching them together is like seeing a particularly manly pas de deux in which they coordinate and mimic one another as the two characters try to bond.

Future viewers watching on TV streamer channels may be inclined to use the subtitle option to follow the dialogue on The Stranger , while the film as a whole could also serve as a public service reminder on the advisability of sunscreen.

Full credits

Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard) Production companies: See-Saw Films, Anonymous Content, Blue-Tongue Films Cast: Joel Edgerton, Sean Harris, Ewen Leslie, Steve Mouzakis, Jada Alberts, Fletcher Humphrys, Alan Dukes, Simon Elrahi, Matthew Sunderland, Cormac Wright Director-screenwriter: Thomas M. Wright, based on Kate Kyriacou’s book The Sting: The Undercover Operation That Caught Daniel Morcombe’s Killer Producers: Joel Edgerton, Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Rachel Gardner, Kim Hodgert, Kerry Kohansky-Roberts, Executive producers: Morgan Emmery, Simon Gillis, Jean-Charles Levy, Thorsten Schumacher, Lars Sylvest Director of photography: Sam Chiplin Production designer: Leah Popple Costume designer: Mariot Kerr Music: Oliver Coates Editor: Simon Njoo Casting: Anousha Zarkesh Sales: Rocket Science

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The stranger review: an effective psychological crime thriller.

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Netflix has yet another true crime narrative available on its platform, and once again, it is bound to receive criticism for how it depicts a real-life event. The Stranger is a fictional account of the investigation to solve the murder of a 13-year-old boy in Australia. However, this tale strips away the key factual details and follows the attempt to capture the killer through an elaborate sting operation by the police. While the filmmakers chose to leave the child's name out of the film, the young boy’s family decried the making of this film . However, the result presents a very strong case for why original filmmaking should be reprioritized in the industry.

Written and directed by Thomas M. Wright, the Australian crime thriller — based on Kate Kyriacou’s novel The Sting: The Undercover Operation That Caught Daniel Morcombe’s Killer — follows a group of undercover cops, who, inspired by a Canadian police operation, create an elaborate scheme to trap a kidnapping and murder suspect to retrieve a confession and the possible location of the victim’s body nearly a decade after the abduction. This operation required the suspect to be befriended, something he has long craved.

Related: Joel Edgerton’s 10 Highest-Grossing Movies, According To Box Office Mojo

The thriller is an actor's showcase, centering powerful performances by Joel Edgerton and a surprisingly impactful performance from Sean Harris, an actor best known for playing villains. By avoiding the actual crime and focusing on the investigation years after the initial abduction, Wright is seemingly being merciful by not dragging the family’s ordeal into the mix. This, in turn, props up the police and the suspect as the only characters of interest in this story, thus creating a character-driven narrative paid off by excellent performances. To Wright’s and the actors’ credit, The Stranger succeeds at having the audience enraptured by the performances and the story that unfolds around this friendship.

The film is dark and gloomy, the atmosphere thick with dread and suspense. Sam Chiplin’s cinematography turns the desolate Australian Outback into the perfect battlefield for this psychological war. Oliver Coates’ score amps up the isolation, the distrust, the stakes and, more importantly, the seriousness of the whole operation. Wright’s intent is to keep the audience off balance, sometimes threatening to disorient in the first two acts as the mystery slowly is pulled into focus. There is a brutality to the film that isn’t forced by graphic violence or over-the-top and harsh actions. There is a subtlety to it. However, what is perhaps the crime thriller's most influential — albeit unintentional — part of the film is the sense of unease as the narrative tiptoes around the real-life missing case of a 13-year-old boy.

To be fair to Wright and actor-producer Joel Edgerton, The Stranger is an effective and affecting psychological thriller . Enough is changed from the real story to create some semblance of originality, allowing the audience to sink their teeth into the narrative without feeling like voyeurs to a horrific crime. To many non-Australian viewers, it will be the opening note that states the film is based on a true story that will give it away. Most viewers will probably find the story made up, as such an investigation, and the confessions they yield, are not permissible in criminal courts in the United States and in most regions around the world. Overall, The Stranger is compelling, enthralling, and brilliantly executed.

The core issue that will make or break one’s viewing experience is questioning the desire to tie it to a real case. The approach to solving this case is unique and instrumental to solving the biggest kidnapping case in Australia. However, the tactic itself is reason enough to inspire a crime thriller; the real-life case could have been kept entirely out of it. Out of respect to the family who was so adamantly against this film, perhaps fundamentally changing the crime in question would have allowed this film to flourish without any controversy. At the core, the film has an interesting thing to say about the effects of diving deep undercover to uncover the truth and catch a predator. The tiring, stressful endeavor is painful to watch as the film slowly builds suspense. The investigation and how it was carried out draw audience's attention.

As with the countless reboots and remakes, true crime thrillers don't need to retraumatize victims and their families. Creativity and a touch of originality could spare everyone the grief. The Stranger proves that Wright is a capable director and writer who can create a compelling piece of art that unsettles audiences and draws out effective performances. One wishes his efforts were not anchored by the need to recapture the atmosphere of a real-life traumatic event.

NEXT: Till Review: Danielle Deadwyler Is Excellent In Powerful Biographical Drama

The Stranger began streaming on Netflix October 19. The film is 117 minutes long and is rated TV-MA.

The Stranger

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The Stranger

Two men who meet on a bus strike up a conversation that turns into friendship. For Henry Teague, worn down by a lifetime of physical labour and crime, this is a dream come true. Two men who meet on a bus strike up a conversation that turns into friendship. For Henry Teague, worn down by a lifetime of physical labour and crime, this is a dream come true. Two men who meet on a bus strike up a conversation that turns into friendship. For Henry Teague, worn down by a lifetime of physical labour and crime, this is a dream come true.

• Thomas M. Wright
• Kate Kyriacou
• Joel Edgerton
• Sean Harris
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• 165 User reviews
• 62 Critic reviews
• 74 Metascore
• 8 wins & 18 nominations

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• Trivia Producer Rachel Gardner said in April 2020 that "this is a challenging time for our industry, particularly for crew, but we are gearing up to move straight into production on 'The Unknown Man', which will be shooting in and around Adelaide, as soon as is practicable". 'The Unknown Man' was the working title of this film.
• Goofs Apparently cadaver dogs have yet to make their way to Australia.
• Connections Featured in Amanda the Jedi Show: The Most Theatre Walkouts I've EVER Seen | Cannes 2022 Explained (2022)
• Soundtracks Trojan Blue Written by Iva Davies (as Ivor Davies) Administered by Kobalt Music Publishing Australia Pty Ltd Performed by Icehouse Under exclusive license from Diva Records Licensed courtesy of Universal Music Australia Pty Ltd

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The Stranger review – a crime film set to a slow simmer

The eloquently ominous The Stranger is an extraordinarily patient and simmering Australian crime drama that slowly gets under your skin.

This review of the Netflix film The Stranger (2022) does contain spoilers.

The Stranger , a simmering Australian drama that moves to an overwhelming emotional boil, may be one of the most patient crime thrillers you’ll ever encounter. Written and directed by Thomas M. Wright ( Acute Misfortune ), this eloquently ominous film slowly gets under your skin, all before it begins to pull back layer after fascinating layer.

The film stars the human chameleon Sean Harris ( Spencer , The Green Knight ), a down-on-his-luck, sad sack ex-criminal named Henry Teague. He meets a man named Paul ( Where the Wild Things Are ‘s Steve Mouzakis ), who he helps get his car out of an impound. Paul then helps Henry connect with a colleague involved in some shady dealings. His name is Mark ( Joel Egerton ), and he is a member of a criminal organization that only cares that Henry is upfront and honest with him. This is an issue since Henry Teague is not his real name.

Now, I went into The Stranger , not watching a single clip or trailer or reading up on the 2022 Canne film entry . The film’s trailer gives everything away quickly, and if you know the source material, everything will be spoiled immediately. So, I recommend stopping reading now if you want to avoid spoilers. You’ll thank me later.

Wright’s film is based on Kate Kyriacou’s nonfiction bestseller, The Sting: The Undercover Operation That Caught Daniel Morcombe’s Killer . The story follows Australia’s most famous undercover operation. The film’s great script has one big reveal during each act and keeps the viewer guessing what will happen. For example, in the first section, we wonder what Henry has caught himself in. As the story progresses, Henry begins to act stranger, and his behaviors can be erratic. The viewer now doesn’t have a protagonist to trust or put their faith in. Yet, no one seems to be who they claim. That’s because Harris’s character is based on Daniel Morcombe and Mark is an undercover officer.

What makes The Stranger so interesting is how it turns the crime thriller on its end. We are trained to watch car chases and watch detectives beat up criminals to get the answers they are looking for. Here, we are neck-deep in psychological warfare. Wright remarkably shows you how instead of iron fists as tools, we see Egerton’s Mark uses something entirely different — empathy. As a way to slow-play manipulation — allowing Mark to gain Henry’s trust.

You’ll also notice, if you are paying attention to the scenes involving two detectives going over evidence and background information, Mark is also triggering Henry. Why? In the hopes of pushing him to break and become vulnerable. For example, having Henry burn a car brings back memories of a previous crime the undercover officer is well aware of.

The Stranger is a much stronger film going into the experience blindfolded. However, there is no denying the craftsmanship that has taken place here. Wright’s film intentionally underwhelms but that never takes away from its compelling nature. While the magnetic Egerton represents the film’s anxiety and pent-up release, it’s the stoic and jaw-dropping turn by Harris that keeps the film such an absorbing experience. Along with Matthias Schack-Arnott and Oliver Coates’s beautiful score and Sam Chiplin’s evocative cinematography, Wright’s film captures the operation’s extraordinary composure and restraint with his intelligent script with hypnotic effects.

What did you think of the Netflix film The Stranger (2022)? Comment below.

Additional Reading for The Stranger

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Article by Marc Miller

Marc Miller (also known as M.N. Miller) joined Ready Steady Cut in April 2018 as a Film and TV Critic, publishing over 1,600 articles on the website. Since a young age, Marc dreamed of becoming a legitimate critic and having that famous “Rotten Tomato” approved status – in 2023, he achieved that status.

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‘the crow’ og director revels in remake’s “brutal” reviews: “cynical cash-grab”, cannes review: joel edgerton & sean harris in thomas m wright’s ‘the stranger’.

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An undercover cop befriends a murder suspect in The Stranger , a taut Australian thriller in Cannes ‘ Un Certain Regard section. Written and directed by Thomas M. Wright ( Acute Misfortune ), it features excellent performances from Sean Harris and Joel Edgerton , who also serves as producer.

The Stranger begins simply enough: two men strike up a conversation on a long bus journey. One is a loner, Henry (a perfectly-cast Harris), the other a new arrival in town, Paul (Steve Mouzakis). Paul needs a friend; Henry needs work. When Paul offers to introduce his new pal to his criminal contacts, Henry nervously accepts. Enter Mark (Joel Edgerton), who’s presented as a mid-level crime boss with smuggling work on offer. Intimidated but fascinated, Henry goes along for the ride and is drawn to Mark, spending time with him on the job.

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Except, there is no job. It is revealed early on that Paul and Mark are police detectives working as part of an elaborate operation to identify and befriend a series of suspects in a case of child murder years earlier. It’s a grim but riveting premise that’s a fictionalized account of the police operation outlined in Kate Kyriacou’s book THE STING: The Undercover Operation that Caught Daniel Morcombe’s Killer .

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As we watch Mark and Henry grow closer, a parallel narrative shows the larger force’s efforts to determine the men in the area of the boy’s abduction. Key to this is Detective Rylett (Jada Alberts), who gradually becomes convinced that Henry is the one responsible. The timeline of this manhunt is perhaps deliberately unclear, but the details are as fascinating as Mark’s quest to win Henry’s trust and coax out key information from his past.

As the pair continue their uncertain dance, driving from wasteland missions and motel meetings to Henry’s sparse home, the tone ranges from sinister to wry and observational. Watching two gruff, socially-challenged men crack open beers and attempt a conversation — while simultaneously lying to each other — teeters on the edge of dark humor. But the sobering reminder of what’s at stake is always around the corner.

The editing in The Stranger creates nightmarish moments within Mark’s narrative: abrupt cuts are often followed by the detective waking up in a sweat. The toll on this single father is clear, and well portrayed by Edgerton, but it’s told in an impressionistic manner that doesn’t fully explore his character. Nevertheless, you’re left with an admiration for the extraordinary police work that usually remains secret by its very nature — and this quietly compelling insight will stay with you for a while.

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‘The Stranger’: Cannes Review

By Fionnuala Halligan 2022-05-20T16:57:00+01:00

Joel Edgerton’s brooding performance anchors this intense Australian true crime thriller 

Source: Rocket Science

‘The Stranger’

Dir/scr: Thomas M. Wright. Australia. 2022. 116 mins.

Based loosely on a real-life case involving the disappearance and murder of a young Australian boy in 2003, Thomas Wright’s intense and unnerving The Stranger envelops audiences in the dark shadows of Australia where one undercover detective risks his sanity to catch an elusive no-name drifter. Wright crafts a hyper-elaborate set-up and delicate drip-feed of information which make spoilers an equal crime, but The Stranger is more of a felt experience than a traditional policier; it’s all about the hunt, not the crime. The Stranger’ s otherworldliness belies the ‘based on a true story’ credit - Australia is portrayed as a shady place of closed-curtains and over-hanging cloud - but this reality looms over the narrative despite the editorial decision not to personalise the victim.

This isn’t the blindingly dusty outback of Ivan Sen’s  Mystery Road , or the twisted sickness of  Snowtown , but there is a tough, male line that binds  The Stranger  to its Australian stablemates

Joel Edgerton anchors the proceedings as only Joel Edgerton can: an intense and brooding presence, the actor, and the Australian crime setting, will be the main draw for this portrait of everyday evil which bows in Un Certain Regard at Cannes. Nobody better to convey evil, either, than British actor Sean Harris, his crooked features contorted into a waxy shapeshifter. The film’s aesthetic and unconventional approach - mumbled dialogue, abrupt jump-cuts - could see it land softly in art-house theatres but with much more vigour on high-end streaming platforms outside Australia where familiarity with the case should ensure a strong following.

Wright’s first film, Acute Misfortune , was also a tense portrait of a relationship between two men, although the writer and artist portrayed there could hardly be more different to the drifter and pursuer here. For those new to the Sunshine Coast murder of 13-year-old Daniel Morcombe and the subsequent hunt for this body and killer, the largest Australia had ever mounted, it’s never clear where Wright is taking The Stranger . It starts on the Glass House Mountains, with police conducting a forensic search, and violently jump cuts back in time, to the dark interior of a bus at night, a disembodied baroque journey out of state which will only end with the film.

Here, the drifter Henry (Harris), tired, solitary and hard, befriends Paul (Mouzakis), a sad-sack petty criminal who, eventually, introduces him to Mark (Edgerton), a monosyllabic bag man for a local crime syndicate. ‘I don’t do violence,’ says Henry, when he’s offered the job as Mark’s ride along after Paul is ‘relocated’. ‘Just tell me the truth,” says Mark. Both are lying: Mark is an undercover investigator, part of a huge sting operation, while Henry has violence in his past, certainly — just how much is for Mark to figure out.

This isn’t the blindingly dusty outback of Ivan Sen’s Mystery Road , or the twisted sickness of Snowtown , but there is a tough, male line that binds The Stranger to its Australian stablemates (Jada Alberts is the only woman in the show, as a dogged investigator charged with pursuing the case as it goes through another iteration - six years have passed since the child disappeared at the point The Stranger commences). There is no gore or violence here, no bodies, no morgue scenes, but the stakes couldn’t be higher as Mark starts to crack under the pressure and the ‘Mr Big’ sting operation fractures.

The 116-minute running time starts to bag as the film winds to a conclusion which Wright leaves tantalisingly open, but DoP Sam Chiplin’s work always impresses in its defiance of the conventions associated with the true crime genre. He makes distinctive frames out of the shadows, the greys and the duns and the tobacco lighting, cut with adventurous editing from Simon Njoo which isn’t afraid to dislocate the viewer. Composer Oliver Coates hums an air of menace at just the right level as the camera gets into the car with these two ponytailed, monosyllabic outcasts and their ‘friendship’ builds. At the start, as Wright’s film creeps up the verdant mountaintop which will later claim such significance in the piece, the blend of Indigenous-tinged music with silent treescape brings to mind Peter Weir’s Picnic At Hanging Rock . There are secrets buried here too, but the answers can only come from the dark human heart of The Stranger.

Production companies: See Saw, Anonymous Content, Blue Tongue Films

International sales: Rocket Science,  [email protected]  

Producers: Joel Edgerton, Rachel Gardner, Emile Sherman, Iain Canning, Kerry Kohansky-Roberts, Kim Hodgert

Screenplay: Thomas M. Wright, based on ‘The Sting’ by Kate Kyriacou 

Production design: Leah Pope

Editing: Simon Njoo

Cinematography: Sam Chiplin

Music: Oliver Coates

Main cast: Joel Edgerton, Sean Harris, Ewen Leslie, Jada Alberts, Cormac Wright, Steve Mouzakis

• Un Certain Regard

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‘The Stranger’ Review: Joel Edgerton Stars in Tasteful, but Muted Aussie Crime Drama

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Joel Edgerton ’s drawling voice instructs us to “breathe out the dark black air” over an image of police officers combring long grass in search of something. Or someone. This is how “ The Stranger ” opens, posing the question of how much darkness we will need to breathe out in the course of the film. Thomas M. Wright — best known for playing Elisabeth Moss’s sexy, traumatized love interest in Jane Campion’s “Top of the Lake” — offers a sophomore directorial outing that fits right in with the wave of early Australian directors who emerged with a crime drama pivoting around the bleakest of human deeds.

Compared with David Michôd’s dread-fueled “Animal Kingdom,” Justin Kurzel’s sadistic “Snowtown,” and Mirrah Faulkes’s vaudevillian “Judy & Punch,” this is a relatively straight and somber affair. Across locations that hop between Queensland and an anonymous Southern Australian sprawl, Wright draws a tasteful veil over macabre details that some of the above would have marinated in. Instead, the filmmaker focuses on setting up one kind of story before pulling the rug out to reveal something altogether, well, stranger. 

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On the note of strangers, initially it is impossible to tell whether this term is designed for Mark (Joel Edgerton) or Henry (Sean Harris). British actor Harris has been steadily cornering the market in playing profoundly unsettling characters over the years. He has, as we say in the UK, “something of the night about him,” with beady button eyes staring out of an inscrutable face and a body that is long and wiry, like a praying mantis. We meet Henry, sporting a straggly beard, as he pounds a treadmill in total darkness. There is a mutual attraction between Henry and Paul (Steve Mouzakis), a low-level criminal operator, after the pair meet on a plane. Henry doesn’t want to talk about who he is and Paul doesn’t want to know.

Creepy underworld figures meet the pair in hotel rooms to brief on assignments. The audience is aligned to Henry’s perspective of having no idea about the material function of his tasks. He is just grateful to have a job, which entails wingmanning Paul in couriering mysterious brown envelopes to mysterious men in mysterious locations. Harris channels a humor born of his uniquely odd screen presence, responding to a very menacing job offer with an offhand, “Yeah, why not?” Here is a man content to tie himself to an unknown criminal organisation with a light shrug of the shoulders.

There is a simmering strength to Wright’s decision to keep us on a-need-to-know basis for the duration of the first act. When a rattled Paul has to be sent out of the country, it’s unclear whether this is a Stalin-esque “disappearance” or whether he really is just being related. Mark steps into the breach as Henry’s immediate superior. Paul urges Henry to “trust Mark” — advice that cuts another way once “The Stranger” reveals its true identity.

Mark and Henry’s relationship shifts between collegiate and peculiar. It is designed to intrigue the audience, but as character details are few and far between, supposedly pregnant silences fall somewhat flat. We learn that Mark is a single dad and hear the opening voiceover again as he teaches his kid to meditate. Arguably, it is Mark with the dire need to let go of negativity, as we see his frayed temper coming out at home. Henry is a much more blank slate. He has been to jail and doesn’t want to go back. He lives alone and has few attachments.

The tempo starts to lag after the big reveal that precedes the second act. Wright’s choice to play his hand — a staggering, stranger-than-fiction one — in a muted fashion means there’s not much for the mood to do except offer: “More of the same, now from a different perspective!” Cinematographer Sam Chiplin delivers a visual language characterized by low-lit beige rooms, gray asphalt under a speeding car, and the bleached yellow grass of Southern Australian plains. Initially this scans as an appropriately drab creative decision, but as the real story takes over from the Macguffin, and loaded moments hinge on, say, a fax slowly being spat out of a printer, this visual language lands as underdeveloped.

Perhaps the best thing to say about “The Stranger” is that it understands the strength of the tragedy at its core. In the Greek myth, Perseus fighting the gorgon Medusa knew not to look her directly in the eye, lest he was turned to stone. Wright offers haunting details without showing us the full monstrosity of his sorry tale. There are shades of David Fincher’s “Zodiac” present in both the beige-tastic aesthetic and in the depiction of the personal toll of obsession.

Where Wright’s unflashy script allows, Edgerton does some of his best work, particularly as the film approaches its finale. The last few scenes are very strong indeed, as the subdued mood gives way to the latent emotion of the story. Had Wright focused on letting these emotions ebb and flow throughout the runtime, this could have been a genuinely devastating film. As things stand, this is a curious, slightly underwhelming offering. Even so, falling flat as a result of being understated to a fault is a promising event in a genre dominated by obvious signposting, and Wright is certainly one to watch for the future.

“The Stranger” premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.

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'My First Film' Review: Zia Anger’s Daring “Directorial Debut” Is the Meta Movie to End All Meta Movies

'out come the wolves' review: a survival thriller that takes a gnarly bite out of toxic masculinity, 'paradise is burning' review: a beautiful coming-of-age drama filled with everyday horrors.

When having a nightmare, there is often a moment when you are suddenly jarred out of a fitful slumber. In writer-director Thomas M. Wright ’s The Stranger , a dark drama loosely based on a true story that patiently yet painfully defies convention, we are firmly planted in this moment of terrifying disorientation. Sometimes it takes the form of a literal cut that closely mimics the experience of a nightmare ending. At others, it is a general sense of dread that threatens to consume the characters navigating a world of darkness. It is a work that initially withholds much of its full wickedness before revealing itself to us in macabre yet mesmerizing fashion.

First premiering at this year’s Cannes Film Festival , The Stranger centers on the duo of Mark ( Joel Edgerton ) and Henry ( Sean Harris ) who have just met. They appear to be complete strangers and begin to get involved with potentially illicit dealings. It starts when Mark picks up Henry, who had expected to meet with a different man whom he had just met earlier on a bus. They go on tense, largely silent drives where they meet with men in dingy parking lots or hotels that are oddly devoid of almost any other guests besides them. Soon, a cautious Henry begins to trust Mark and opens up to him. It would be hard to call it a friendship, but it feels like the closest that both have had to one in some time. However, as is revealed to us early on, Mark is actually not here to make friends and is not who he is pretending to be. He is actually an undercover cop who is attempting to get information out of the seemingly unsuspecting Henry who is believed to be behind an unsolved murder that happened many years ago.

This is a premise that may sound like it has all the makings of a crime thriller and, in many ways, the literal progression of the plot could easily fall under this banner. What ensures the film finds its way into other thematic and narrative ground comes from its presentation. There is the driving force of trying to piece together the details of the killing and achieve some sense of justice that still remains elusive. With that being said, there is an overbearing and ominous darkness to every interaction. There is no thrill to the chase or joy to the hunt as one may have seen in other stories of undercover investigations. All of that has been whittled away by a weariness that acts like an infection as it takes hold of the entire experience. In particular, Edgerton is outstanding yet understated as he captures the enveloping and overwhelming fear that dominates his character’s life. It comes out in bursts of anger or sadness that he can’t allow to sneak out when undercover. We see the toll this takes on Mark that threatens to tear him apart. There is no glamorizing of this work. There is only a devastating grimness.

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While Edgerton helps to bring this all to life, the film would be nowhere near as affecting without Harris alongside him. He disappears completely into a character who is initially reserved though no less haunting. The more Henry begins to open up, the more we begin to see all the more disturbing aspects of him come out into the open. In many ways, his journey serves as a mirror to Mark who we had first believed to be a confident and hardened man who feared nothing. It is only looking back that you realize, from the moment he first picked up Henry, he was playing the part he needed to. He did so both for his own survival and for the sake of the investigation. It is hard to know exactly how much time has passed though it is clearly more than enough for Mark to begin to grow fearful of being found out by Henry.

The petrifying anxiety over his mission pushes him to toe an ethical line in a manner that is never showy yet still deeply disquieting. There is even a moment where, faced with the choice of whether to help someone who had gotten seriously injured or potentially blow his cover by calling for help, Mark flees from a scene he partially caused. It is a fleeting moment, but a revealing one of many that push the story into unexpected places. There is no lasting catharsis or celebration to the process of discovery as everything just keeps getting more crushing in its exploration of these two characters. The compelling yet terrifying truth it is facing down is that there may not be any hope of either coming out fully unscathed.

What proves to be less compelling is when the film pulls back from Mark and Henry to establish some of the details of the investigation surrounding them. This takes the form of glimpses of the other officers and suits planning out the operation. Some of this provides an intriguing juxtaposition where the bureaucracy crashes up against the brutality underlying everything. Where it starts to get a little lost in itself is when timelines converge in a way that feels unnecessary in how it spells out what could have already been inferred. The film seeks to play this as being a big reveal even as we had already been well aware of everything we needed to do without this. It only serves to create an odd narrative junction that severs us out of the unsettling undercurrent the film had been swimming in. The film does dive back in without creating too much of a splash, but there are a couple of scenes that just stick out like a sore thumb. It makes the film less streamlined and, more notably, less sinister when it counts.

What sucks us back into the nuanced nightmare is the way everything else in the film is precisely constructed. In particular, the use of sound is what gets under your skin. There is a striking score of simple yet effective stringed instruments by Oliver Coates , who recently did great work on both Significant Other and Aftersun from this year, though it also goes beyond that in creating a distinct soundscape. From a persistent fluttering sound to a ringing in moments of tension, the film finds fear in even the most basic of conversations. The manner in which these interjections can drown out the dialogue becomes suffocating. Often we get taken out of the normal sound to hear the muffled recording that is capturing all of the conversations. At one moment, when a device fails, the recording takes on a deeper and near demonic tone for just a few words. There is a delicate dance that the film takes part in that approaches being horror before pulling us back from the edge. What makes The Stranger work is how this all creates an experience that feels as though the two men have become almost doomed to a life where they will aimlessly wander in what feels like an Australian purgatory. Whether they ever manage to escape and uncover some sort of closure is irrelevant to the growing rot that threatens to consume their souls no matter what they do.

The Stranger is now streaming on Netflix.

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The Stranger, Netflix review: a waking nightmare with heart

The Stranger. Image: Netflix.

Few are as adept as David Lynch, the American maestro of the malicious subliminal, in inserting seemingly innocuous pop songs into movies in ways that somehow burrow under our skin and start eating our soul from within. It’s fair to say that Roy Orbison did not intend the line, ‘In dreams I walk with you,’ to be quite so creepy as it is when deployed in Lynch’s unsettling 1989 nightmare Blue Velvet , its plot sparked by a severed ear, no less.

But we have an Australian contender in the shape of Acute Misfortune filmmaker Thomas M Wright . His sophomore feature The Stranger, which scooped an Un Certain Regard nomination when it bowed at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year and now enjoys a limited release in Australian cinemas before going global on Netflix on 19 October, deploys a pitch-perfect example.

Fellow Australian director Joel Edgerton plays Mark, a man who wears two faces: an undercover cop and a single father with another name. He is buried deep in the murky waters of an intense act of subterfuge, assuming the identity of a dodgy dealer to win the trust of a terrifying man he suspects is guilty of murdering a child.

Read: ScreenHub interviews Joel Edgerton about The Stranger

That man, also going by a false name (Henry), is played with a jittering intensity by Edgerton’s co-star from The Green Knight and The King , Sean Harris. Mark dangles the enticing promise of oblivion: a total disappearance for Henry, no questions asked, and another new name assumed, if only he’ll carry out one final dubious job. ‘I don’t do violence,’ Henry professes, but we know in our bones that this is yet another untruth.

The cop knows what he’s after – a confession – and will stop at almost nothing to get it. The killer must trust him implicitly, and that requires painstakingly building a relationship built on a lie that could, at any moment, be uncovered. The sheer tension of this double life may yet break Mark, his sleep filled with skittering nightmares that seep into his waking fear while attempting to carry out a normal life with his young boy (played by Wright’s real-life son).

This inexorable dance leads to that gloriously Lynchian moment, when Henry invites Mark into his home while the ‘Missus is out of town’.

Once inside, an intriguing dynamic shift occurs between the men, set to the classic Icehouse tune ‘Trojan Blue’. As Henry switches into an oddly erotically charged dance, the song’s swooping synths reach an almost frantic whinny, the metaphorical gift horse’s mouth prised wide open.

It’s an electric moment of cinema that’s followed, shortly thereafter, by an even more disturbing pass between the men that plays out in a car immediately following a traumatic crash – a pass that suggests another dark David of American cinema, Cronenberg.  

But Wright is a filmmaker with an arresting vision all of his own. As proven by his stellar feature debut Acute Misfortune , which picked at the knotty mess that was Sydney Morning Herald cub reporter Erik Jensen’s real-life entanglement with the controversial artist Adam Cullen. The Stranger, too, draws on grim truths, very loosely based around the sweeping police pursuit that followed the shocking abduction and murder of the Australian boy Daniel Morcombe.

While the film does not depict this monstrous act, nor fictionalise the heartache of his family, realising the shadow of its aftermath via the manhunt that followed was enough to provoke questions over whether the film had a right to exist , so soon after the debate stirred up by Justin Kurzel’s thematically similar film Nitram .

We will all have an opinion on whether fictionalising real human misfortune is fair game. Unlike the grim parade that is Andrew Dominik’s Marilyn Monroe ‘biopic’ Blonde , Wright at least has something more to say with The Stranger . Of double lives and lines crossed, of what it takes to catch a monster and keep that darkness from your door. There are unguarded moments of tenderness, too, as Mark tends to his son and teaches him how best to breathe.

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This sound of air consumed and released overlays the opening credits as we rush over acres of shadowed forest. There is always the feeling of a trapped animal eyeing any escape route, amplified by the profoundly unsettling sonic shifts of Andy Wright’s sound design which messes with time and place, setting the teeth on edge.

As does Radiohead collaborator, cellist and composer Oliver Coates’s score, all bone-sawing strings, and Sam Chiplin’s shadow-heavy cinematography, occasionally set alight with the baleful artificial glow of computer and traffic red lights blinking.

This unbalancing combination ensures that we can never quite find our footing. A waking nightmare that holds the heart of life in its hand as something worth fighting for, even after all is lost, The Stranger proves once again that Wright knows all the right moves.

The Stranger

Australian, 2022, MA15+, 117 mins

Director: Thomas M Wright

Writer: Thomas M Wright

Producers: Iain Canning, Joel Edgerton, Morgan Emmery, Rachel Gardner, Simon Gillis,

Kim Hodgert, Kerry Kohansky-Roberts, Jean-Charles Levy, Thorsten Schumacher, Libby Sharpe, Emile Sherman, Lars Sylvest, Alexandra Taussig

Distributor: Netflix

In cinemas now, streaming on Netflix from 19 October.

4 out of 5 stars

Stephen A Russell

Format: Movie

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New Netflix movie The Stranger lands an almost perfect Rotten Tomatoes score

The tense thriller stars Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris

The Stranger is Netflix’s newest original crime thriller, and it's been getting rave reviews. The film – not to be confused with the Harlan Coben Netflix series of the same name – is an Australian crime drama directed by Thomas Wright.

It follows the friendship that forms between two strangers, Henry (played by Sean Harris) and Mark (Joel Edgerton). Their new connection is a great comfort to them both, but it soon becomes clear that they are hiding the huge secrets of their past from each other. Meanwhile, a huge police operation is closing in the background.

The tense thriller has debuted to an almost perfect Rotten Tomatoes score, landing 96% with critics on the review aggregator. "Moody and atmospheric, this is a superior true-crime tale. Edgerton and Harris are on knockout form," says Total Film's James Mottram in the pages of the new issue, featuring Enola Holmes on the cover . "It’s abundantly clear that The Stranger has crept, assiduously, into brilliance," writes The Guardian’s Luke Buckmaster in his five-star review. "To call it an unconventionally impressive crime drama is to put it very lightly."

Sydney Morning Herald’s Paul Byrnes says: "In tone, the film is brilliantly hidden. It takes a long while to work out what’s happening. The atmosphere is gloomy, distrustful, brutal in language, with a jangly soundscape and music."

"What makes The Stranger so interesting is how it turns the crime thriller on its end," M.N. Miller of Ready Steady Cut argues. "We are trained to watch car chases and watch detectives beat up criminals to get the answers they are looking for. Here, we are neck-deep in psychological warfare."

While Deadline’s Anna Smith writes: "You’re left with an admiration for the extraordinary police work that usually remains secret by its very nature – and this quietly compelling insight will stay with you for a while."

Although, not all of the reviews have been positive. Hannah Strong of Little White Lies wrote: "There are some striking images within The Stranger matched by its aesthetic intensity, but the convoluted plot is withholding in a way that makes it difficult to truly connect with the story, as worthy a subject it might be."

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I’m the Deputy Entertainment Editor here at GamesRadar+, covering TV and film for the Total Film and SFX sections online. I previously worked as a Senior Showbiz Reporter and SEO TV reporter at Express Online for three years. I've also written for The Resident magazines and Amateur Photographer, before specializing in entertainment.

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The Stranger Reviews

The wholly absorbing, irresistible character study of two men who aren’t always who they seem to be, one haunted by the demons of his past choices and the other crippled by guilt and attempting to preserve his identity while hiding in plain sight.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 23, 2023

If you like slow movies with tough, serious themes, based on true events, with sinister and dark characters, go for it.

Full Review | Jul 1, 2023

To call it an impressive and offbeat crime drama is putting it very lightly. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Dec 22, 2022

A movie whose every dark or overcast shot, every quiet conversion and every revelation contributes to the rising tension and the inescapable gloom tinged with grief that follows this "Stranger” — up close, and from a distance — from beginning to end.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 18, 2022

Wright crafts a hyper-elaborate set-up and delicate drip-feed of information which make spoilers an equal crime, but The Stranger is more of a felt experience than a traditional policier.

Full Review | Dec 14, 2022

An annoying chore. A stronger second half comes some way in making the ordeal worth it if you haven’t already dropped off for a tactical mid-fest snooze.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Dec 14, 2022

The Stranger offers strong, subtle performances from its leads, and a freshly vital approach to familiar material.

Wright artfully directs his film with the kind of precision that’ll keep you hanging on to every shot.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Dec 14, 2022

There is a good film in The Stranger somewhere. But viewers will have to wade through a lot of clunky chronology to find it.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 14, 2022

This quiet, sly crime movie is yet another gem from Australia's Blue-Tongue collective.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 5, 2022

Finely tuned unconventional crime drama about a brooding psychopath protagonist.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Nov 18, 2022

Generating an increasingly tense, immersive atmosphere, [director Thomas M] Wright gets some intense performances from his leads in a skilfully minimalist film

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 17, 2022

...dramatic fiction with thematic overlaps to Al-Khatib’s documentary...

Full Review | Nov 11, 2022

It does move to its own unique gritty rhythm. But once you get in step with it, it’s hard to turn away.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 10, 2022

The mystery is always kept to your attention and the police procedural that results is fascinating.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Nov 9, 2022

Writer/director Thomas M. Wright’s true crime suspense thriller is a collection of shattered fragments, from its crosscutting among various story and timelines to the shattered psyches of its protagonists...

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Nov 7, 2022

The film builds up as the story moves forward and revitalizes the undercover cop genre to focus on the perturbed psyche of the policeman in question. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Oct 26, 2022

One of the best things to be said about this is that it's difficult to get too much into why The Stranger works without spoiling the story.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 25, 2022

Taut and effective.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 25, 2022

Sean Harris further cements his reputation as one of the most magnetic screen actors today; sporting a colossal beard and shoulder-length hair, his character here is an endlessly watchable presence and enigma.

Full Review | Oct 25, 2022

‘The Stranger’: Coming to Netflix in October 2022 and What We Know So Far

Hotly tipped for awards in 2023 is 'The Stranger' which is headed exclusively to Netflix in October 2022.

Picture: Netflix

Ever expanding its feature film slate, Netflix has acquired The Stranger , a tense Australian thriller The Stranger starring Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris, which premiered at the Cannes Festival earlier this year and will be headed to Netflix in October 2022. 

The movie is written and helmed by actor and director Thomas M. Wright , whose directorial debut was 2018’s Acute Misfortune . He commented on working on The Stranger :

“With The Stranger, I wanted to make a psychological crime film that took audiences into a place that is hidden — a film that was authentic and realistic in its detail, but also immersive and cinematic. A film that demanded attention and investment. A film that an audience could lean into — and fall into. I centered the film on people who didn’t know the victim, but who devoted years of their lives – and their mental and physical health – to them; because though violence is the reason for this film, it is not its subject. Its subject is the connections between people. That means that, for me, this is a film defined by empathy.”

Director Thomas M. Wright in the middle with stars Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris at the Cannes Film Festival 2022

Wright also added about the movie being acquired by Netflix:

“For an independent Australian film to premiere in the Official Selection in Cannes, and then be brought to the largest audience anywhere as a Netflix film, is unprecedented. We couldn’t be more proud of this film and to be partnering with Netflix to release it to an international audience.”

The Stranger is produced by See-Saw Films, Anonymous Content, and Blue Tongue Films, whose founder Joel Edgerton stars alongside Sean Harris.

The movie has received rave reviews from various critics online. The Guardian gave the movie a 5-star review saying by a certain point in the movie:

“it’s abundantly clear that The Stranger has crept, assiduously, into brilliance; to call it an unconventionally impressive crime drama is to put it very lightly.”

Here’s everything else we know about Netflix’s The Stranger :

When is the The Stranger Netflix release date?

The first we saw of Netflix’s The Stranger was a released clip at the Cannes Film Festival.

With the release of the official trailer, we can confirm the release date as Wednesday, October 19th, 2022 .

The film will be reportedly available on Netflix globally except for the following areas: Italy, Benelux, Portugal, Greece, Israel, and the Middle East.

The movie will also be available in select theaters in October 2022. This is undoubtedly to allow the movie to qualify for the Oscars and other award shows in 2023.

What’s the plot of The Stranger ?

Here’s the official logline for the movie:

The Stranger is based around two strangers who strike up a conversation on a long journey. One is a suspect in an unsolved missing person’s case and the other the undercover operative on his trail. Their uneasy friendship becomes the core of the tightly wrought thriller, which is based on the true story of one of the largest investigations and undercover operations in Australia.

Who is cast in The Stranger ?

Golden Globe nominee Joel Edgerton plays one of the two main characters in The Stranger.

Netflix’s The Stranger stars Joel Edgerton ( Obi-Wan Kenobi ) and Sean Harris ( The Borgias, Mission Impossible ).

The performances of both leads are praised by critics who saw the movie at two film festivals.

They are joined by Steve Mozakis ( I, Frankenstein ) and Jada Alberts ( Mystery Road ).

Are you excited for the release of The Stranger on Netflix? Let us know in the comments below!

Tigran is our resident previews writer. He works on collecting everything known about upcoming Netflix Original projects and also is editor-in-chief of Redanian Intelligence. Resides in France.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Stranger’ on Netflix, a Hypnotic Australian True-Crime-Drama Starring Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris

Where to stream:.

• The Stranger (2022)
• joel edgerton

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The Stranger (now on Netflix) is a BOATS ( Based on a True Story ) crime-drama with bleak arthouse sensibilities – two great tastes, as they say, that really grind you down with the combined weight of their depictions of the darkest corners of the human condition. Joel Edgerton is the star you recognize, sharing the bulk of the scenes with Sean Harris, one of those That One Guy character-actor types whose face you know but can’t quite place. Thomas M. Wright directs with an austere tone that keeps us guessing as to what exactly his principal characters are capable of, psychologically or otherwise – and that’s why this unassuming film keeps us so tightly in its grasp.

THE STRANGER : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: At this point, nothing is certain. Some certainty may be attained by the end, but how much hope should we have? The rumbling, growling synths on the score push us toward being cautious with our hope. In voiceover, a man talks about inhaling clean air and exhaling the black. We get a brief glimpse of police conducting a roadside evidence search. Then we see a weathered-looking man with a big scraggly gray beard. He’s Henry Teague (Sean Harris). He’s on an airplane. The man in the adjacent seat, Paul (Steve Mouzakis), strikes up a conversation. By the end of the trip, Paul gets Henry a job with an employer. Whatever that job is, we’re not certain. But it’s the type that pays in cash and requires all involved to speak in coded vaguenesses. Guns or drugs, probably; human trafficking, possibly.

Henry seems fine with that, and is likely familiar with that. Soon, Paul’s out and Mark (Joel Edgerton) is in. Mark is to shadowy illegal “businesses” as mid-level managers are to corporations – a go-between who shuffles himself and his underlings into and out of meetings. Mark presses on Henry to tell him everything about his criminal background. No judgment, the bosses just want to know if there are any signposts for potential trouble. Be honest, Henry. And Henry insists he’s on the level, saying he did a couple years for assault, and has been in and out of jail here and there. Henry says violence is off the table for these vague whatever gigs, because second offenses are where they really get ya.

Mark drops Henry off for the night and speaks into the bug on his body, coding the end of the recording he’s making for the cops. Because Mark is a cop, a deep-cover man hoping to – well, the less you know about the truth and nature of all this, the better the movie is. The guy narrating about breathing at the beginning of the film? That was Mark, getting his young son to relax and fall asleep at night. But it’s for himself as well; this is a harrowing, high-stakes job, and a good night’s sleep is a rare occurrence. It’d weigh heavily on anyone, for sure, but especially so for a father, since the case he’s working ties to the abduction and disappearance of a boy roughly the same age as Mark’s son. Mark goes home, hugs his boy, pops a beer and does a little plop-plop-fizz-fizz but I don’t think there’s a lot of relief to be had from the compound traumas of this experience. Not yet, anyway.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Wright seems to draw from some of the best directors on the fringe of the business today: He borrows some meditative surrealism from Robert Eggers (brief visual and tonal flourishes from The Lighthouse and The Northman ), snatches a static landscape or two (accompanied by a harsh musical score) from Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood , summons the intensity (and child-abduction tragedy plot) of Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners and fiddles with narrative chronology a la Christopher Nolan (nothing Inception crazy, maybe more Insomnia or Dunkirk ).

Performance Worth Watching: Harris is damn terrifying as a man who’s almost certainly a far worse human being than he says he is, but leaves just enough doubt in your mind that you wonder whether he’s truly a far-gone sociopath, or just a petty, pathetic loser.

Memorable Dialogue: “I don’t do violence.” – Anybody believe Henry when he says this?

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: The Stranger is a lurking-dread movie in which a long-gestating, patience-testing quest for truth and closure burrows in deep, hypnotizes us a little bit and forces us to carry some of the burden of its intensity. All the better to empathize with a man who sacrifices his psychological well-being in order to do good, for the sake of a suffering family and community. Is it heroism? Of a sort, because it’s morally righteous, but uncovering the sobering, awful deeds of another man is a classic stare-into-the-abyss-and-the-abyss-stares-back situation. Subterfuge of any sort has its price. The reaper always takes its toll.

So the movie is almost repressively somber and far from uplifting. Such is the nature of such true-crime sagas, fictionalized or otherwise. But neither is it a hopeless depiction of a world without love or empathy; the basic, mundane tasks of fatherhood in which Mark partakes carry greater significance in the context of this story. Wright offers visually compelling angles on familiar crime-drama tropes, creating texture with sound,amplifying the paranoia with the buzzing and humming feedback of surveillance gear. Narratively, he’s tantalizingly coy, stingy with character and situational reveals, taffy-pulling the suspense, keeping us tuned to his clarity of purpose even when the details are nebulous. Keeping your cards close to your vest is the strategy of the strong player; bring on Wright’s next film, please.

Will you stream or skip the hypnotic Australian crime-drama #TheStranger on @netflix ? #SIOSI — Decider (@decider) October 20, 2022

Our Call: The Stranger offers strong, subtle performances from its leads, and a freshly vital approach to familiar material. STREAM IT, but weak psychological constitutions and short attention spans need not apply.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com .

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The Stranger, review: Jennifer Saunders thriller is macabre and gruesome – but it’s also funny

Netflix’s new adaptation of a harlan coben novel shows its machinery so nakedly that it almost defies you to switch off, article bookmarked.

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The Stranger (Netflix) is a Danny Brocklehurst adaptation of a Harlan Coben novel, transposed from New Jersey to Manchester. It’s billed as a psychological thriller, which is usually code for the plot revolving around suburban shagging rather than spies and guns. Richard Armitage plays Adam Price, a lawyer with an enviable life: good job, big house, fashionably landscaped garden, two friendly and accomplished sons. Best of all, he is married to Corinne (Dervla Kirwan), bright, gorgeous and a popular teacher at the kids’ school.

One day, with Corinne out of town at a conference, Adam attends a “dads and lads” football match. A mysterious woman (Hannah John-Kamen), a man in the novel, approaches him in the bar afterwards to change his life. She tells him that Corinne faked a miscarriage and suggests he run a paternity test on his boys. She tells him to call her The Stranger, then drives off before he can get a picture of the numberplate. When Corinne returns, Adam confronts her, having checked an online clue the Stranger gave him. She admits she owes him an explanation, but says she needs time to prepare. Then she vanishes, too, leaving Adam to look after the kids.

So begins the unravelling of the Prices’ apparently perfect life. Most thrillers would shy away from introducing a character as “The Stranger”, who arrives and lobs mysteries into people’s lives, and it takes some chutzpah to be so brazen. Who is she and what’s her game? Stay tuned to find out.

Meanwhile, a parallel plot is under way, involving a boy from school who is found naked and injured in the woods after a rave. DS Johanna Griffin (Siobhan Finneran) and sidekick Wes (Kadiff Kirwan, no relation to Dervla) are on the case, as well as investigating the gruesome murder of an alpaca. This is where things start to get weird. Perhaps this is just prejudice against more familiar subjects, but what might seem noirish in an American setting gains a comical aspect in Britain. It’s macabre and gruesome but also funny, in that Hot Fuzz -ish way. I’m not sure if it’s meant to be, but then Jennifer Saunders arrives as Johanna’s best mate, Heidi, and you don’t cast Saunders unless you’re playing it partly for laughs. What does the Stranger have in store for her?

There are enough unanswered riddles to draw out over eight hours of drama. Armitage and Dervla Kirwan are convincing as the professionals harbouring dark secrets, while Finneran makes a suitably beleaguered detective, trying to do her job while worrying about how to leave her husband. Kadiff Kirwan is more out of place as her bumbling junior.

The bigger question is whether you care enough to wait for the answers. The Stranger is a curious beast, an almost-pure mystery, which shows its machinery so nakedly that it almost defies you to switch off. Whether you binge the entire series in an afternoon or hurl the controller out of the window in frustration will depend mainly on your tolerance for being mucked around.

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The Stranger (2022) Movie Review – A bleak true-crime story setup in an ironic ruse to settle on the truth

A bleak true-crime story setup in an ironic ruse to settle on the truth

The word “stranger” has to be one of the most ubiquitous things in movie titles. Adding the word in the mix itself gives you an impression of mystery and intrigue. On its own, it piques your interest in the story and readies you for an engrossing experience.

The Stranger on Netflix, however, subverts all of those expectations. The flavor of mystery and storytelling is completely reinvented for the penchant of rare suitors seeking a complex challenge to dissect.

Sean Harris and Joel Edgerton play the bad guy and the cop, but the actual ramifications of these classifications are rather not as simple as they seem in the scheme of the film. The film is based on true events that sparked the largest investigation into the occasion of a child killed in abduction.

The Stranger works in a Shutter Island-like ruse to get out the truth. Although it is distinctively less dramatic and more poignant, that is the basic premise of the story. Paul and Henry (Harris) meet on a bus and the former introduces the latter to his boss, Mark (Edgerton), who is an expert in making criminals looking to escape the reality of their lives disappear. But little to Henry’s knowledge, Mark is actually an undercover agent with the crimes unit. From there on in, we see the largesse of the plans behind the works unfold and devour Henry’s trust, only to deliver him to the justice he evaded all those years ago.

There is perhaps nothing straightforward about the movie. The storytelling is highly obtuse, seldom settling on a clear direction or answer to a question. It always takes the harder way out that involves establishing deep, volatile connections between the two men.

Henry and Mark propel the story forward by spending more time with each other with a skewed scale of honesty bringing them together.  Mostly, the background is filled with information and words. The soundscape is quite heavy on those. But in their absence, everyday sounds of things being displaced come out with monstrous viscosity. It is indeed very minimalist.

There’s hardly any background score you can grow accustomed to, except the constant, ominous fluttering around the mountain ridge we visit often. And as a result, even the banalest of sounds, like a floorboard creeping when half stepped on, can have an overwhelming effect. Also, thanks to Netflix’s brilliant rendition through its Dolby surround sound and ADS technology, The Stranger envelops you when you watch it with a good set of headphones on. The minimalism is a wise touch, given how verbose the screenplay is. This dynamic with the narrative enhances the storytelling experience for you as a viewer.

Every minute is sewn together to keep you engaged with the narrative and with the characters all the time. The dialogue has a flimsy, fleeting quality that you can miss even if you take your attention off for a second. It wouldn’t be fair to call The Strange r plotless because of how unwittingly it all comes together in the end, despite how it feels in the vast landscapes.

For long stretches, you can’t help but feel that this film is a story of the two men, bonding, and growing intimate and not an investigation into getting a confession and solving a decade-old mystery. Joel Edgerton the man and Joel Edgerton the undercover officer should ideally be disjointed.

However, as time wears on and Henry opens up about his life, interests, and details of character, the former two become less and less disjointed. The blurry line that people in his shoes often have to keep intact to have a balance is gradually wiped off. Sean Harris is a worthy companion to Edgerton, matching him every step along the way.

That is what makes The Stranger an intense character study and also a battle for justice that is not vacant. Emotions dictate the latter, while the tragedy of the human condition the former. For all its patience and artistic purity, The Stranger does feel like moving at a glacial pace.

The tone and tenor are easily unlikeable and won’t sweep you off your feet. They become a challenge for average viewers not content with a slow burn where talking is the chosen way to uncover the truth of the story.

The Stranger does not take too much time to arrive at its central conceit – an undercover team working hard to catch their culprit – but takes its own sweet time to adjust you to its cinematic universe where trust is a declining commodity. Full marks to Thomas Wright for remaining true to his vision and not compromising on it to make it more palatable.

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• Verdict - 8.5/10 8.5/10

3 thoughts on “The Stranger (2022) Movie Review – A bleak true-crime story setup in an ironic ruse to settle on the truth”

I love this movie. I have watched it several times. The acting is vital and makes this film mysterious yet so real. How Mark has to suffer this man, Henry, for five months to bring about the objective of getting a confession This is the best movie I have seen in a long while.

Total waste of time.

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