Movies
Love A Good Slow Burn. “The Stranger” & Joel Edgerton Deliver
“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 […]
“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.”
Director: Thomas M. Wright
Writers: Thomas M. Wright, Kate Kyriacou
Staring: Joel Edgerton, Sean Harris
Release Date: October 19, 2022
IMDB
Love a good slow burn? Add The Stranger (2022) to your watchlist.
The Stranger begins with two men striking up a conversation on a bus and developing a odd but seemingly true friendship. But as Thomas M. Wright and Kate Kyriacou’s story unfolds, multiple different points of view emerge. The Stranger begins dripping in its multi-layered facets early on, and come the end of the movie, The Stranger becomes a rather dark and introspective look at what it means to fabricate a friendship for the right causes. Knowing the end goal of a lie gives one a reason to go about living the fib, but it doesn’t make the act itself easier to maintain.
Joel Edgerton plays Mark Frame, an undercover law enforcement officer working on a soon-to-be cold case about a young boy who was kidnapped and murdered. Henry Teague, played by Sean Harris, is a down-on-his luck man looking to change his life around, but struggling to find a way upward. When the pair meet on the bus at the start of the movie, the audience has no idea Mark has hidden motivations, and nor do they know the dark past that Henry is running away from. The Stranger slowly expands on its humble begins like one of the Pillsbury Crescent roll containers. As the screenplay begins to slowly twist the knife of truth into the movie, the audience is put in a pressure cooker waiting to see whether Mark or Henry will pop.
If you haven’t heard of The Stranger, keep it that way. Do not look up any reviews, spoilers or conversations about it. Frankly, skip the rest of this blog post and go watch it. The Stranger benefits best from its anonymity. The movie is remarkably dark and dreary. It has a story that is remarkably compelling, but the reason you’ll be glued to the screen is because of its characters.
Writer and director Thomas M. Wright embodies a lot of Paul Schrader vibes within The Stranger. It is only Wright’s second directing gig, but he movies the movie along with the confidence of someone with something to prove. The relationship that he shows between Mark and Henry is intriguing, to say the least. It is starts out as a chance encounter on a bus and evolves to something of a older brother, young brother dynamic. The Stranger puts a slimy character at the stories center and does its best to empathize him while also magnifying the less than honorable actions Henry has taken part in.
When the undercover sting operation is revealed in full, there is a bit of sinking feeling that befalls your stomach. Henry is looking for a friend and he thinks that he has found on in Mark. He thinks that Mark is his lifeline to a better life, while still an illegal, smuggling one. He wants to build himself back up and he is willing to work for it. Mark is the first person to extend his hand to aid him on his journey of relocation and re-identification.
But it was all for nought. Mark takes Henry under his wing with aspirations of earning his trust, but in this process he loses a bit of himself in the journey. There are moments he has be reeled back in emotionally by his fellow badge members. Mark appeared liked a rather shutdown man before the operation began, and by the end his a shell of himself. He does have. anchor at home in his small daughter, but you can see his relationship get taken over by a dose of paranoia. As Mark begins to learn about Henry, so does he put the locks on his mental ability to separate home and work balance.
To be fair to Mark, hanging out with a possible child killer the majority of the day will affect your mood at night around your child.
Joel Edgerton is damn good at playing a deep, quiet, soulful man. Come the end of The Stranger, you can tell without any words that Henry is definitely no longer a stranger to Mark. There is a friendship there. An involuntary one, but a friendship nonetheless. He cars for how Henry is going to be treated come the end of this sting. There is no waiver from Mark in terms of wanting to complete the job, but the path getting there ended up having more emotional potholes than he would have expected.
Is it weird the first thing I thought of when I saw Sean Harris in The Stranger is that he must now don the Solomon Lane beard in every movie he makes. Seriously. If you have seen Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) or Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation then you know that Henry looks like a mirror image of a rather grimy and unshaven Solomon Lane.
Regardless of the hair style and color, Harris goes beyond the expected pail in his efforts as Henry Teague.
I say that about Harris, but my thoughts still go to Edgerton. Harris has the fun part to play. Edgerton doesn’t get to act, as much as react. It is Harris that is propelling the story. It is his actions that move the story to its ultimate ending. The character of Mark, and the police force as a whole, can only plow the fiends of where they think this is going to go, but it is Henry that is laying the tracks. Edgerton has to act, reacting to a lot of things. To everything. He is never truly in control of the situation, even though this secret from Henry gives him the silent upperhand.
Edgerton is able to play this patience reactionary process brilliantly. You can see the wheels churning in his head, and you know that he has created this persona of quiet and contemplative to help him take his time analyzing everything that is happening.
I fucking love it.
The Stranger unwinds its extra long and remorse story without a care for your day or your calendar. It is a movie that takes its sweet ass time getting to its points. And I am so happy it doesn’t give a fuck. Round of applause to Thomas M. Wright, fellow writer Kate Kryiacou, Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris for bringing this gem to life. It is always a great thing to be surprised watching a movie, and The Stranger is the most surprised I’ve been in a long time.
STANKO RATING: B+
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