Like true-crime biopics Snowtown and Nitram before it, a new Australian film starring Golden Globe nominee Joel Edgerton as a deep undercover cop was always going to be controversial.
The Stranger, on cinematic release on October 6 and then globally on streaming giant Netflix on October 19, is based on the true story of one of the largest investigations and undercover operations in Australia.
Written and directed by Australian actor Thomas M Wright, the film is a fictionalised account inspired by the unprecedented manhunt for young Queensland schoolboy Daniel Morcombe, who was abducted while waiting for a bus on the Sunshine Coast on December 7, 2003 and murdered.
It sparked one of the biggest manhunts in modern policing.
Eleven years later his killer, serial pedophile Brett Peter Cowan, was eventually convicted in 2014, and is serving a life sentence in a Queensland jail.
Although Wright says the film isn’t about what happened to Daniel, nor is he named, the Morcombe family expressed outrage after its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May and before its debut at Melbourne International Film Festival last month.
Now, the Morcombes face more heartache with the wider release.
Back in July, Daniel’s parents Denise and Bruce, who had campaigned tirelessly for 11 years to find their boy, described those who made the film as “parasites”.
In a statement on Twitter on July 14, Mrs Morcombe said her family did not support the film.
“Individuals who make money on a heinous crime are parasites. They are callously disrespectful to Daniel, the DMF and the Morcombe family.
“We find the making of the movie morally corrupt and cruel.”
The New Daily has reached out to the Daniel Morcombe Foundation for comment.
‘Dealing with pretty primal forces of right and wrong’
In July, the film’s producers issued a statement which said The Stranger “tells the story of the unknown police professionals who committed years of their lives and their mental and physical health to resolve this case, and others like it”.
The official Netflix synopsis says the film revolves around two strangers who strike up a conversation on a long journey.
“One, a suspect in an unsolved missing person’s case; the other, an undercover operative on his trail. Their uneasy friendship is at the core of this tightly wrought thriller.”
It’s the relationship between the suspect, played by BAFTA winner Sean Harris, and the undercover cop, Edgerton, who befriends him.
In an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald in July, Wright (whose first film Acute Misfortune was also based on a true story) said it was a “moral choice” to fictionalise the tale “while staying close to the reality of the manhunt”.
“I felt I had no right to depict that child and no right to presume anything about what that family actually went through,” he said.
“I also had no interest in representing the real person responsible for this thing.”
He told Deadline in May the film took the three of them to some dark places.
“It really did take us to some very, very dark and difficult places,” he said, adding that it was a “frightening film to take on”.
Edgerton, who is also producer on The Stranger, said he thought Wright was capable of making the film in the most “unobvious way”.
“It’s something we feel is very sacred and we’re very proud of where it’s landed.
“It’s a film that deals with so much violence and yet, one of the great ways about how Thomas [Wright] rendered the script that came out of that book is that the violence is always looming, but it’s not a film that is dripping with violent action.”
Snowtown and Nitram
Last year at Cannes, director Justin Kurzel’s film Nitram – about the events leading up to the Port Arthur massacre, premiered amid controversy.
The Stan Original film starred Judy Davis (The Dressmaker), Essie Davis (who was born in Tasmania), Anthony LaPaglia (Lantana) and American actor Caleb Landry Jones as mass murderer Martin Bryant.
The decision to dramatise Australia’s worst mass murder, and the man who perpetrated it, was described by critics as likely only to cause hurt by opening old wounds in the name of voyeuristic entertainment.
The film was criticised by survivors, while then Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he was unnerved about revisiting the Bryant case.
Former Tasmanian premier Peter Gutwein said he felt “highly uncomfortable” about the film, but said it wouldn’t be right to censor the movie altogether: “I would hope the filmmakers are being sensitive in the way they shoot this particular production.”
Kurzel was also behind the making of the 2011 Snowtown movie, one of the darkest and most grotesque films in Australian cinema history.
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