Joel Edgerton Gives the Best Performance of His Career in Netflix’s New Frontier Drama

It’s practically cliché at this point to praise an actor’s role for being “quiet” or “lived in,” to marvel at performances that don’t feel like performances at all; the kind that bend reality just enough that we stop noticing the artifice and start believing what we’re seeing is simply life unfolding. But every so often, a film arrives that reminds us why that cliché is so damn compelling. Train Dreams is that film. Adapted from Denis Johnson’s novella, Clint Bentley’sSundancebreakout settles into the first half of the 20th century and watches the American West remade by rails, saws, and ambition. In that slow transformation, Joel Edgerton‘s Robert Granier carves a life from wilderness, his axe rising and falling in rhythm with a land that both provides for and rebels against him. Edgerton has always been excellent, but he ascends here to something rarer than “scene-stealing”: a rendering so intimate it feels like peering through someone’s life rather than witnessing a series of scenes strung together on a screen.

Granier’s ambitions are simple: provide for those he loves, live in harmony with a country being altered beyond recognition, and endure with integrity. The film follows him as he moves through logging camps and homesteads, through bonfires and blizzards, with unwavering commitment. Beside him, Felicity Jones’s Gladys is his partner and equal, their marriage marked by a shared toughness that never overshadows tenderness. In the background, forests fall, rail lines snake through canyons, and a new century announces itself with smoke and steel and unimaginable feats of humanity. But the film’s heart stays close to the ground, to the calluses formed from hardship and the quiet, unremarkable moments that accumulate into a life. It’s slow and meditative, occasionally bleak, but so rich with feeling. And at its center, Edgerton gives the finest performance of his career by doing something deceptively difficult: he makes the ordinary feel anything but.

The Quiet Brilliance of Joel Edgerton in ‘Train Dreams’

As actor Will Patton’s omniscient voice tells us at the beginning of Train Dreams, Idaho at the turn of the 20th century is a land both untamed and unforgiving, where the push of progress often collides with the stubbornness of the wilderness. Logging camps rise and fall like temporary towns, leaving barren land in their wake. Edgerton’s Robert Granier inhabits this world with a quiet determination, moving through the physical demands of his job with an ease that masks the weight he carries. His thoughts, regrets, and small moments of wonder are never spoken aloud (though Patton’s exposition usually doubles as his inner monologue). With deliberate pacing, the film traces Granier’s life from youth to adulthood, from his humble beginnings as an orphan who somehow just appeared in a small town in the Pacific Northwest to a husband, a father, a friend, and a witness to history.

At home, with Gladys, he builds a house, raises a daughter, and finds happiness. It’s when he’s thrust out into the wider world that he’s confronted with violence and injustice. The murder of a Chinese immigrant who worked alongside him haunts the character for much of the film. Grainer’s inaction in the face of prejudice damns his conscience in ways we can see, but others can’t. His friendship with a more seasoned railroad worker (an almost unrecognizable and at-the-top-of-his-gameWilliam H. Macy) offers memorable and moving moments of wisdom, but the hardest lessons are the ones Grainer must endure and survive to truly learn.

That Edgerton conveys all of this with just a handful of lines is remarkable. His work in the role is a masterclass in subtlety, a presence that feels organic rather than performed. Granier is stoic yet compassionate, principled yet fallible, a man whose inner life is conveyed in almost imperceptible ticks: the flicker of an eye as Edgerton witnesses oppression and mistreatment, the brief tightening of his jaw before a heavy swing of the axe, the sheer emotion behind his slightly-drooping eyes as he falls in love, suffers unimaginable loss, and forges on anyway. Performing with little dialogue demands presence, and Edgerton does it with such ease, you quickly forget this isn’t the life he’s living.

How ‘Train Dreams’ is The Sum Total of Edgerton’s Film Career

Edgerton’s work in Train Dreams feels like the culmination of a decade spent refining his craft, the sum of a career that hasn’t been all that loud, but has collected plenty of small, memorable moments. From the simmering regret and crippling desperation of Tommy Conlon in Warrior to the moral steadfastness of Richard Loving in Loving, and the taut, terrifying micro-expression mastery of Simon in The Gift, some of his best roles have been a study in restraint and precision. Looking at Train Dreams, these performances now feel like building blocks. In Granier, Edgerton delivers a career consolidation. Every gesture and pause carries years of experience, not just from the character’s life, but from the actor’s own growth.

Bentley’s film provides the perfect landscape and narrative patience for this achievement. Its slow pace, intimate framing, and lush visuals give Edgerton the space to inhabit Granier fully, while supporting performances from Jones and Macy complement rather than compete. The film’s power lies in understatement: the drama is in small choices, in the painfully ordinary moments gathered in a life. In this quiet, meditative space, Edgerton’s talent is undeniable, and his performance is proof of his evolution. He’s at the absolute top of his game in Train Dreams, but we get the feeling there are even greater things to come.

Train Dreams is now playing on Netflix in the U.S.

Release Date

November 7, 2025

Runtime

102 minutes

Director

Clint Bentley

Writers

Greg Kwedar, Clint Bentley

Producers

Ashley Schlaifer, Marissa McMahon, Michael Heimler, Teddy Schwarzman, Will Janowitz