MOVIE REVIEW: 'Perfect Stranger'


From the April 13 Oregonian ....




The thriller "Perfect Stranger" opens "Fight Club"-style -- only instead of the opening credits zooming out of the lead character's brain, they zoom out of the lead character's eyeball.

Given that director James Foley also helmed the crisp, smart and nasty film version of "Glengarry Glen Ross," you might be tempted to read something into this. Does the eye-zoom symbolize something? Is it warning us to question what we're about to see? Is this mainstream suspense flick going to smuggle in some sort of sly commentary on misdirection and the nature of seeing, yadda yadda yadda?

Unfortunately, the answer to all these questions ends up being a resounding "Who cares?" Because after it gets going, "Perfect Stranger" joins the growing list of blandly made erotic thrillers that contain no eroticism, few thrills and even fewer likeable characters.

Every single person in this movie is loathsome. Our putative heroine Rowena (Halle Berry) is a New York investigative journalist who works in an alternate reality where "investigative journalism" involves yelling a lot, dressing up in disguises, misrepresenting yourself to U.S. Senators and bugging conversations as part of elaborate sting operations.

Rowena's tech support in this nonsense is a drunken doormat (Giovanni Ribisi) who's sexually obsessed with her. She decides to use her journalistic powers (i.e., lying and hacking) to obstruct justice so she can solve the murder of the creepy girl (Nicki Aycox) who slept with all Rowena's friends and lovers.

In the process, Rowena does a ton of online chatting (thrilling!) and insinuates herself into the life of a powerful ad exec (Bruce Willis) prone to adultery and anger mismanagement.

Sounds charming, doesn't it? It's also unpleasantly dull and kind of dopey. Several actors manage the strange feat of looking incredibly pretty while generating next-to-zero sexual heat. And the weak-sauce mystery story massages you into indifference -- then tries to clock you with one Fungo bat of a loopy twist that leaves you questioning not reality, but why you just spent 109 minutes trying to give a damn.

C-minus; 109 minutes; rated R for sexual content, nudity, some disturbing violent images and language.

Erotic thriller with no eros, fewer thrills (The Oregonian, April 13, 2007)

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Posted: Fri - April 13, 2007 at 02:18 PM        

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