The Stranger ★★★½ 

DANIEL James Morcombe was abducted in Queensland in December 2003 when he was 13 years old.

Eight years later, following an elaborate police investigation, Brett Pete Cowan was charged with Daniel’s murder.

DNA tests confirmed bones found in the Glass House Mountains were Daniel’s and in March 2014 Cowan was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Thomas M. Wright’s 2022 film The Stranger focuses on the exhaustive police investigation rather than the crime itself.

The script is based on the non-fiction book The Sting: The Undercover Operation That Caught Daniel Morcombe’s Killer by Kate Kyriacou, but the names have been changed, presumably either for legal reasons or out of respect for Daniel and his family.

The potential killer was identified by police early, but there was a lack of evidence and the investigation widened.

But police kept coming back to the one suspect and decided to mount a covert procedure known as ‘Mr Big’ or the ‘Canadian technique’ where multiple undercover officers create an apparent crime network and slowly draw their suspect in.

The aim is to eventually create a situation where the suspect fully trusts the group to the extent that he confesses to past crimes.

Wright’s story focuses on these events, but it is also a character study of two men – undercover cop Mark Frame, played by Joel Edgerton, and the suspect Henry Teague, played by the great Sean Harris.

Both men are tired – Frame of chasing and Teague of running, but it’s a difficult process to gain a man like Teague’s trust to the point when he sees no alternative but to reveal his riskiest secrets.

It’s a slow burn in the tradition of other Australian crime films like Snowtown and Nitram that also challenge audiences by not being unsympathetic to the perpetrator.

If you can accept that approach you will particularly enjoy the first-rate performances, particularly from Irishman Harris who also masters the accent.