Perfect Stranger

I've read all the negative comments and I'm starting to think someone who hates Halle Berry has created multiple accounts. I hadn't intended on seeing it, I just felt like going to the movies this afternoon. The movie I wanted to see didn't start until later so I said 'what the heck, I'll give it a try'. This movie was a pleasant surprise for me.

I called it noir-ish because that's the feeling I got from it. And I have to say that sitting in the theater I thought, 'Gee, it's nice to see a movie with two real live movies stars in it.' You get all kinds of weird combinations these days with stars and starlets and rap artists that it's no wonder that most movies are awful.

In this case you have a story about a woman played by Halle Berry who is an investigative reporter for a major newspaper. She has a great story that her paper decides to not use. In anger, she quits, and at the same time a maybe even more important story, involving an advertising giant played by Bruce Willis, falls in her lap. So the movie is about her trying to get to the bottom of this story along with the help of her friend/colleague, played by Giovanni Ribisi. Now I'm purposely not including any spoilers because I personally like to know as little as possible going into a film.

I think a good number of people who like movies like The Usual Suspects or Lucky Number Slevin will like something like this. Now where I think we can really tell is if you also saw and didn't hate the Black Dahlia. A lot of people didn't like it. I loved it. But being very specific there were people who didn't like it because they felt the ending was too quick and that there was no way you could have figured it out with the information at hand until the movie explained it for you at the end. I disagree but those people may have a problem with this. Anyone who wants to figure mysteries out before the end and doesn't want to go along for the ride may have the age old complaint of "how are we supposed to figure it out if they only told you (insert important plot point) at the end?" I'm not one of those people. I like to go along for the ride. That being said, I do think there is enough info that if you really want to guess at the ending you could do it.

The acting was great. I'm not that big on Halle Berry but she did the best job I've seen her do in a while. Bruce is becoming someone I definitely trust with my money. And, imo, it's Giovanni Ribisi who stole the show here. He's getting better all the time.

This movie is for adults, not that it's too much for a teenager to handle. I just don't really think it's something your average teen would be interested in. And it's an R for a couple of reasons. So I'm going to recommend it for older mystery and/or noir fans who don't mind not being able to figure out the ending.

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 :)

In New York, the investigative reporter Rowena Price 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 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, 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, Ro is hired for a temporary work in Harrison's agency to get close to the executive and investigate his life.

I was looking forward to this film, although critics panned it. I heard that there was a twist ending in this film and you know this gets me excited. What if it was like "Dead Silence"? The movie was bad with a good twist ending? Actually, the answer was vice versa: The movie was good with a great twist ending.

Sure, some maybe call if ridiculous and preposterous but when you're being entertained, who cares? This is a stylish techno-thriller and there are some suspenseful moments. The twists and turns work for me and so does the performances.

Maybe it's another forgettable thriller, yeah. Maybe it's a preposterous, A-list cast, overwrought thriller, yes. But maybe it's an entertaining, stylish thriller which will keep your attention until the satisfying twist ending.

Have you ever met someone who you didn't like at first but, after you made an effort, they kinda got your attention?

I had to make the effort with Perfect Stranger. It is not an easy movie to like. Its direction seems pedestrian, the camera-work and editing wanting, and the acting wasted. The characters are not very nice people, but not evil enough to be anti-heroes.

But let's work backwards. It has a killer ending. If you worked hard to follow the complex plot, your efforts pay off. That makes you feel good. Like listening to a person you can't get away from who has droned for an hour and a half and then suddenly what they are saying makes a warped kind of sense. The plot might be convoluted, but I have to admire the way it fits the horrible, cynical pieces together. An hour afterwards, it reminds me of old B-movies that you might dig up and pick little gems from their rotting carcass.

So what's it about? Well, it could be about anything - no, that's me being too disingenuous. It's a mystery thriller. A whodunnit. It has Halle Berry moving through several personas and Bruce Willis being quite disgusting and yet getting our sympathies. She's an investigative reporter. He's the head of an advertising agency. Then there's some fabulous shots from the newly-completed 7 World Trade Center, the first of the new buildings on the former WTC site. Look out for stunning wraparound views of Lower Manhattan, the Hudson River, and New Jersey.

Annoyingly, the film doesn't glamorise its strengths. A key early conversation between Halle Berry (Rowena) and her pal Grace is almost overpowered by the background noise of the subway trains. Almost, but not quite - are you paying attention? The views of New York are more impressive when you think back to them. But at the time we see them, we are trying to figure out what kind of game Harrison Hill is playing. Similarly, an early scene of outrage that could have grandstanded Berry's acting talents is subsumed into a very ordinary establishing shot. But condemn it early on at your peril. Dismiss it and you forego the enjoyment of a well-constructed mystery, even if it doesn't live up to the star ratings its big names might suggest. This film doesn't follow the 'good' rules, you long for something to spice it up. Some flashy camera-work, fancy edits maybe. Or something sexy with Halle Berry's legs? And you don't get much of that. Does the story have you by the balls yet? Probably not. "Stroke a man's (beep), you get him for one night - stroke his ego and you get him for life." Grace's comment only hits us after we leave the cinema. It might not be that simple, but Rowena, like any good journalist, only does 'sexy' here for effect.

Rowena's pal winds up dead. Very dead. Horribly, bloated, facelessly dead. At this point, I was still thinking how they 'should' have directed the movie to give it more impact. Later on, I appreciate the understated style. It also leaves you free to follow the plot more carefully than if you are having clues and red herrings rammed down your throat.

Rowena takes on another identity to get a job at Harrison Hill's agency, as well as some more online personas. The powerful Mr Hill seems to have been in everyone's pants (even though he has a genuinely stunning wife). Yet Willis plays the role with such honesty that we almost don't want him to get caught out. He might be a sleaze but Rowena's co-investigator, Miles, is a sleaze-ball of a different kind. Miles does online jiggery-pokery to find out stuff for Rowena. But he is also a different kind of twisted power-tripper and runs rings around her.

Perfect Stranger lulls us into moral condemnation. Its outlook of the world is totally cynical. "Show me a beautiful woman and I'll show you a man who's tired of (beep)ing her," confides a Hill employee to Berry. When you meet the perfect stranger do you assume the best? Or do you assume the worst?

"To a certain extent, everybody lives a double life," says Academy Award winner Halle Berry. "We're all complicated beings; we're different people all the time - for example, a woman might act differently at work than she does at home. We all hide something, even from our best friends. This movie highlights that and takes it to the next level, showing what we're capable of when we're forced to come to terms with it."

OK, we know that nothing and no-one is perfect, and we accept that they everyone and everything is 'packaged', right down to the Veronica Secret gift bag that the ad agency is giving away. But ultimately Perfect Stranger is packaged as carelessly as if it were wrapped in second-hand gift wrap. That makes it easy to dismiss. Or loathe. But its self-effacing, redeeming qualities are perhaps sufficient not to ignore. Mystery thriller geeks, get your ticket now, before it is condemned to obscurity.

(note - I have censored certain words from the quotes from the film for this site)

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.