Perfect Stranger

In New York, the investigative reporter Rowena Price (Halle Berry) sees her scoop about a gay senator spiked by her editor. She quits her job in the newspaper and meets with her childhood friend Grace (Nicki Aycox) by chance in the subway. Grace tells Ro that she had just been dumped by the powerful and wealthy owner of the greatest New Yorker advertising agency, Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis), and she was threatening to tell his wife about their affair. When Grace is found dead, Harrison becomes Rowena's prime suspect. With the support of her hacker friend and former colleague Miles Haley (Giovanni Ribisi), Ro is hired for a temporary work in Harrison's agency to get close to the executive and investigate his life.

"Perfect Stranger" has a good story, with a surprising twist; the lead cast has the names of Halle Berry, Bruce Willis and Giovanni Ribisi; unfortunately, the screenplay does not work well since it does not create an empathy of the viewer with the characters, which have dirty secrets. In the end, this film is a good and forgettable entertainment. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Estranha Perfeita" ("The Perfect Stranger")

After viewing Perfect Stranger, I went on the film's page at the IMDb, and found out that there were three different endings filmed, each one with a different character being guilty. This does not surprise me at all. This is a movie that jerks us around simply for the sole fact that it wants to jerk us around. It doesn't want us to figure it out, and it doesn't play fair. When I realized that there was no point in following the clues and the movie simply plays to the demands of the filmmaker and which ending worked best with test audiences, it made me hate this shallow and silly excuse for a thriller even more.

The film centers on an investigative journalist named Rowena (Halle Berry) who specializes in going undercover and exposing corporate and political frauds with the help of her creepy best friend and co-worker Miles (Giovanni Ribisi) who seems to have a certain unhealthy obsession with her that is painfully obvious to the audience, yet Rowena seems blissfully ignorant to. Rowena's having a tough time after she quits her job due to one of her stories falling through and a childhood friend of hers named Grace (Nicki Aycox) turns up dead. The two women just happened to have a chance meeting in a subway shortly before Grace's murder, and she told Rowena about how she had been having an on-line affair with a powerful New York ad executive named Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis). Grace had mentioned that their relationship had recently soured, and that Harrison was no longer talking to her. When evidence pops up that Grace may have been pregnant, Harrison becomes all the more suspicious to Rowena, especially since the man is married and has a long history of past affairs. Deciding to investigate on her own, Rowena turns up at Harrison's corporate office as a Temp and tries to get close to him, with Miles trying to dig up more dirt on the guy. Naturally, things are not what they seem, and the movie has more red herrings than a fresh fish market to keep us guessing in sheer futility.

There's nothing exactly wrong with the concept behind Perfect Stranger, and director James Foley certainly gives the movie an attractive look. The problem lies with the screenplay by Todd Komarnicki. He seems to be trying to make an erotic murder thriller along the lines of Basic Instinct, but the movie is not very erotic nor is it very thrilling. The pace is leisurely to the point of being nearly stagnant, and the few sex scenes contained within the film are completely and instantly forgettable. I guess we're supposed to be enthralled by the twisting plot that casts everyone who plays a major role into a shadowy light. The movie stresses time and time again that everyone has dirty secrets, and yes, many secrets are exposed. The problem is almost all of these secrets exist simply to throw us off course. Not one leads to the correct answer. The answer exists simply in whatever of the three endings worked out the best. A thriller like this has to be planned out and lead to one true answer, not whatever answer the filmmakers feel like.

Long before we find out that the movie doesn't even want to play fair, Perfect Stranger never truly captures our attention to start with. The characters are murky at best and, as previously mentioned, exist simply to lead us in multiple directions. They are victims of a plot that knows it's clever. They have no personality and no real motivation other than to act as red herrings. A good example is the character of Harrison Hill, who is slimy simply because he is supposed to be slimy for the sake of the story. He cheats on his wife, he threatens his business enemies, and when he finds out that one of his employees has been leaking info to an outside source, he physically abuses him right in front of all the other employees. None of these actions truly matter. They have no motivation and they do not drive his character to any sort of goal. We can't become attached to these people, because they're not even human to start with.

Since winning the Oscar for Monster's Ball, Halle Berry seems to be on a strange single-minded quest to kill her career. Chalk up another loss for Berry. She's passable at best, but just about any other actress could have filled her shoes, and she brings nothing to the character. Same goes for Bruce Willis, who has absolutely no charisma, and we cannot understand why he is such a ladies man except for the fact that the movie tells us he is. The only performance that does stand out is Giovanni Ribisi as Miles, and it's for all the wrong reasons. He is immediately suspicious to us, because Ribisi plays up the weirdness of his character almost from the instant he walks onto the screen. This makes the fact that Berry's character does not even seem the least bit unnerved by him make her come across as a total idiot.

I will not reveal the ending of Perfect Stranger, but I will say this. When the ending comes, did you personally see anything during the course of the movie that could have led us to the conclusion it wants to lead us to? We don't get the full story beforehand. All the clues, all the evidence, all the paths it had led us down had nothing to do with anything. The movie is a great big exploding cigar that laughs at us when everything blows up in our face. There are no right and wrong answers. Just one very uninteresting movie that doesn't even have the nerve to play fair.

Perfect Stranger I had read really bad reviews of the movie on the internet and I was not sure whether I should go to see this movie or not. I had to choose between a 1918 Austrian silent movie and this. I chose this, just because it was a new movie.

The story is about a journalist – played by Halle Berry, who does sting operations on rich powerful businessmen. With one mission unsuccessful due to politics and power-play in not covering the sting by the news industry and she quitting her job; she pursues Harrison Hill – played by Bruce Willis – to expose the murder of her friend. She takes the help of her colleague Miles – played by Giovanni Ribisi. I would not disclose the expose and let the last frame suspense let out.

The movie is quite engaging throughout, and I found the reviews a bit harsh and lopsided. It is not such a bad movie as made out to be by film critics. The mystery quotient shifts from one character to another, I had guessed one when the murder took place, but due to the course of engrossing events and incidences – I lost that thought; only to re-emerge as the mystery I had guessed in the first place.

The ending was a bit lame, and there are lots of loose ends hanging. Halle Berry looks good and tries to act sincerely. At times she has captured some emotions perfectly. Bruce Willis does not have much to do and as usual he mumbles his way through the movie and at times displays his whimsical temper. The surprise pack was Giovanni Ribisi – as the colleague and close friend of Halle Berry – who has a huge crush on her and manipulates Halle's effort to solve the mystery.

James Foley – the director, lost the plot in the end, but leaves behind an engrossing story overall.

(Stars 5.25 out of 10)

PERFECT STRANGER is a fast-paced little crime mystery of a film that despite the innumerable sidebars of undeveloped information scattered throughout the script does manage to surprise the audience at the end. The movie seems to be a vehicle for the beautiful Halle Berry to show off her skills and other assets: Bruce Willis is billed as a co-star but his role is minor and unexpectedly underplayed - a nice little tour de force for the king of action flicks.

Berry plays a reporter with a man's nom de plume that allows her to uncover secrets of famous people for newsy stories. Once fired from her job for uncovering the deeds of a Senator who is promoted by her newspaper, she teams her good buddy Giovanni Ribisi, a wizard of information about the media and internet spying, and the two go after a wealthy ad executive (Bruce Willis) when the murder of one of Berry's old girlfriends stirs both her wrath and her own secret demons. The chase is on with Berry playing games of deceit backed by the skills of Ribisi. And just when the plot seems to have uncovered the murderer, then another line of story involving Ribisi and Berry explodes the audience's tracking of the crime with a rather good ending.

Berry is fine in her role as is Ribisi with his: Willis is not on the screen long enough to form an opinion, a fact that is actually rather a refreshing twist! The camera loves Berry in all her glamour and manages to turn sordid when the plot elements necessitate that. It is a fair evening's diversion and were it not for all the 'dropped ideas' that plead development, it would be a stronger thriller. Grady Harp

I went to see this movie because well...I had seen everything else that could possibly interest me. So I got my ticket, sat down and expected a really really bad movie because everything I heard about this movie was 'that' bad. And to my surprise it wasn't 'that' bad.

Sure it's not what one might expect from an Oscar winning actress but still, not that bad! People should really give this movie a break, I have seen much much worse over the last 18 months. This movie is just a nice easy to watch movie, if you're looking for a real bad thriller that tries to be sexy try to watch 'Basic Instinct 2' and I say try because that movie is 'that bad'.

So put in perspective, 'Perfect Stranger' delivers enough to be entertaining in it's genre, it's not the best thriller ever but it sure isn't the worst, far from it.

Say what you will, I enjoyed it :)