The Stranger follows an undercover cop who pretends to form a friendship with Henry Teague, a man believed to be a child murderer.
Good thrillers manage to conjure suspense by keeping the most important element of the story in the dark, but great thrillers manage to do the same by introducing the crucial element first. The Stranger falls in the latter category as it never allows the tension to disappear even when the answer to the mystery at hand becomes obvious after one stage.
The Story
Henry Teague meets a stranger named Paul on a bus trip to his home in Western Australia. After becoming acquaintances, Paul offers Henry Teague a job that comes with good money.
For the job, Henry is introduced to Mark Frame, an undercover cop who disguises himself as part of a large criminal organization that helps individuals erase their criminal records and start anew. Mark intends to gain Henry’s trust and squeeze out evidence of a crime that Henry is believed to have committed in 2002.
However, as Mark develops a deeper friendship with the suspected killer Henry, an internal struggle starts within Mark that pushes him to the edge.
Reasons To Stream
Sean Harris and Joel Edgerton steal the show with their nuanced performances as their commitment and sincerity become resounding elements of The Stranger. Sean Harris as a suspected murderer and Joel Edgerton as a depressed undercover cop play their characters with a gravitas that adds to the simmering tension necessary for a film of this sort.
As a suspect who is equidistant between guilt and innocence, Sean Harris evokes sympathy at one moment and disgust at the next. In a battle between two sides, the balance keeps oscillating between Mark and Henry, establishing the film’s worth as a skillfully crafted piece of film. Joel Edgerton’s Mark and Sean Harris’ Henry present through their stark characters a struggle that is eerily similar.
The film’s ability to hold tension is evident from the first scene itself. However, the true accomplishment is director Thomas M. Wright’s ability to maintain the tension throughout the film even after the mystery is no longer the same anymore. The dynamics between the pivotal characters of Henry Teague and Mark Frame evoke ample intrigue to attract one’s attention till the very end. Importantly, the film’s strength does not lie in its ability to keep the truth from the audience through constant evasion but in its ability to keep the truth in the front without compromising on the quality of the story that’s left to unfold.
The film also explores the difference between what is known and what is prosecutable. During the parts of the film in which it transforms into a neatly packed procedural, The Stranger navigates the complexities of law that allow a potential criminal to walk free in the absence of tangible evidence.
Reasons To Skip
There are moments when the story tends to deviate from its original course to add greater context to the struggles of the characters, and these moments feel sometimes, although momentarily, unnatural with the rest of the film. While not a deal breaker, if handed better, the result would have been starkly different.
The film also attempts to explore too many questions and leaves too many of them unanswered in the end. While the answers may not prove consequential to the broader storyline, it does feel like a rather unsatisfying ordeal to not witness the story in greater detail. An easy rebalance would have fixed this issue with ample focus on the facts and realities of the story, which is based on a real-life incident, as well as the emotional crisis at play.
The Verdict
Thomas M. Wright has gloriously utilized the talents of Sean Harris and Joel Edgerton to tell a story that’s intriguing and moving. There are limited flaws in The Stranger that makes it a skip on any list. Blending multiple elements to serve a well-made thriller, the film is conscious of what it wants to achieve – a depiction of struggles, internal and external, that follow in the aftermath of a despicable crime. The Stranger is definitely one of the better thrillers that 2022 has witnessed with little going against it even at its weakest moments.
Rating: 4/5
The Stranger is now streaming on Netflix.
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