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

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.

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.