Unknown ★★½
POLICE THRILLER (2022)
Director: Thomas M. Wright
InterpretationsCast: Joel Egerton, Sean Harris

“This film is about unknown violence, or about people’s capacity for violence that we will never understand,” says director Thomas M. Wright.

From Australia comes a special police thriller with two charismatic protagonists. Henry (Sean Harris) moves to the west of the country in search of a better life and is in serious financial trouble. Through a friendly man he meets on the plane, he meets Mark (Joel Egerton), who offers him a job without question. They eventually develop an unusual friendship while working for a local criminal organization. In reality, however, Henry is the prime suspect in an old missing-juvenile case, and Mark is an undercover cop who turned to him to gather evidence in a well-executed police operation.

The film by Thomas M. Wright relies on the principles of concealment and disclosure to introduce us to his atmospheric world. The viewer learns quite early – but not all – about the two main characters, but not about them.

A visibly tormented man with a dark past, Henry seeks a chance for redemption and a new beginning, seeing Mark as someone he can finally trust, even if he hides his true identity from him. He, for his part, is at the breaking point, developing (unconsciously) a human relationship with the person he is trying to trap. Both are lying.

“At the center of it all is the big lie that everything in the film is buried, everything is hidden. There is a huge force behind the film that cannot be named, no one can name it. The film itself can’t, and it doesn’t even try. For me, the film is about unknown violence, or about people’s capacity for violence, which we will never understand and, it seems, will never be able to stop. This is an inexorable force, ”the director notes.

It is interesting, of course, that this particular violence is not present in the film even once. Instead, it reflects the two central characters, superbly played by Joel Egerton and Sean Harris. One seems forever offended by the things he did, and the other by what he saw. The place of their meeting marks a rather abrupt – or perhaps quite appropriate – tragic turn for the viewer.