Perfect Stranger Review

Perfect Stranger: Halle Berry, Bruce Willis, and Giovanni Ribisi team up for this mind numbing thriller. I left this movie with 1 BIG question…..how do scripts like this get green lit? Berry plays Rowena, a journalist always looking for the big story. When a childhood friend of hers is murdered she jumps onto the case – because in movies like this the star journalist is always better at solving crimes than actual cops. Rowena’s profound investigation finds that her friend was having an affair with the top advertising executive in NYC – Harrison Hill (played by Bruce Willis and a damn good “movie name” if I do say so myself). To get the inside scoop on Harrison Hill, she gets a temp job at his advertising firm. From there the plot thickens as we are given even more reason to think that Hill is our perpetrator. Of course, what would a thriller of this nature be without a twist or two……..or five. The movie does have a couple tense moments, but I would have liked a little more given that the movie is like so many we have already seen. The ending is creative, but it is almost laughable when you put it through the “believability test”. Every once in a while a movie of this nature is done right, with just enough thought put into it to allow us to believe in the irrationality of it all. Unfortunately, Perfect Stranger does not have the smarts to make it all work.

* * or a grade of a C -

If this movie had parents they would be: You’ve Got Mail & Basic Instinct

With a running time of 109 minutes
This film is rated R