The Stranger 2022

Thomas M. Wright, an actor-turned-writer-director whose 2018 feature debut Acute Misfortune garnered positive reviews, uses a true-crime story to sift through a stylish but somewhat ponderous meditation on male bonding, trust, and identity in The Stranger. A fictionalized account of the extensive undercover operation that solved the infamous cold case of 13-year-old Daniel Morcombe, who vanished in 2003, the movie centers on character actors Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris’ high-intensity exhibition bout of chameleonic mimicry, mumbling, and beard-growing. The Stranger is unquestionably an advanced genre exercise, more difficult than the typical crime drama but also more engaging thanks to its presumably intentional uneven editing that jumbles the timeline and its use of unnerving shock cuts. The complete image is only gradually revealed in Wright’s tangled, twisted screenplay, which places much more of a focus on the process of conducting the investigation than on the actual crime. In fact, the young victim at the center of the narrative is never even introduced, reducing him to the equivalent of a cardboard cutout or chalk outline who initiates the storyline in the backstory. Since the killer ends up serving as the story’s central character—or at the very least one of them, along with the police officer on the hunt for him—some viewers could find this a little troubling. In spite of this, the filmmaker chose his own son, Cormac Wright, to play Mark’s child, enhancing the topic of parental worry, especially when the youngster goes away to school. A free movie streaming option is available on the Flixtormovies website. Finding the films and TV shows you want to watch is now easier for you.