Sharper ending explained: Unpacking the twisty thriller

The movie is the feature debut of acclaimed TV director Benjamin Caron, whose credits include key episodes of The Crown and Andor, and boasts a starry cast that includes the likes of Julianne Moore and Sebastian Stan.

It also has a non-linear plot that takes a lot of turns over the two-hour runtime, all leading up to one massive final twist. If you've watched it and need a little help putting the pieces together, read on to have the Sharper ending explained.

Sharper ending explained

In order to fully explain the twist ending, it's essential to give a little attention to the complicated set-up that gets us there.

The film is told in a non-linear fashion, introducing us to various characters played by Julianne Moore, Sebastian Stan, John Lithgow, Justice Smith and Briana Middleton, all of whom are interlinked via a series of scams.

The characters played by Stan and Moore are Max and Madeline – a particularly prolific con artist duo, whose latest target is wealthy business owner Richard Hobbes (Lithgow).

With a scam that sees Max pose as Madeline's troubled son, the pair are able to extract significant amounts of money from Hobbes – but things take a turn when Madeline decides to stay with the billionaire and marry him after the scam is finished, rather than returning to Max as had seemingly been the initial plan.

Read more: Sharper director on how Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy helped inspire film

Meanwhile, during this earlier scam, Max had realised that Hobbes's son Tom (Smith) could also be a potential victim, and working with his new accomplice Sandra (Middleton) he manages to con him out of a huge amount of money. This is the part of the film which is actually told first.

This has the double effect of making Richard Hobbes so angry with his son for being cheated out of money that he changes his will, leaving all his billions to his new wife Madeline instead, which she then collects when he subsequently dies.

Rather than lying down and accepting this, however, Tom decides to take matters into his own hands and devises his own scheme to get his money back from Madeline – enlisting the help of Sandra, with whom he had built up a genuine connection when she was scamming him.

This leads to a major confrontation at the end of the film which sees Madeline shooting Tom dead. In order to avoid getting the police involved, she is then convinced to transfer her inheritance money to Hobbes's foundation, which had previously been left to Tom.

Madeline regards this as a very easy way out – she reckons that it will have no real bearing on the money given that with Tom dead, she is now the owner of the foundation anyway, and so she is essentially transferring the money back to herself.

But in the final moments, while Madeline is on a plane with Max, she realises that the blood on his shirt sleeve – which she had thought belonged to Tom – is actually fake. Tom's death had been staged, he is still alive and she has therefore given all the money away to him

In other words: the master scammer has been scammed.

Sharper will open in select cinemas and streams on Apple TV+ from Friday 17th February – you can sign up to Apple TV+ here.

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