Movie Review: Perfect Stranger

PERFECT STRANGER (2007)

* (OUT OF FOUR)

An A-list cast featuring one of the most underrated actors of all time, Bruce Willis, and Academy Award winning Halle Berry, and director James Foley, who's done good work in the past with Confidence and Glengarry Glen Ross, couldn't help Perfect Stranger from being a complete stinker and a waste of my time.

Not long after Rowena (Berry) breaks open the case of a corporate scandal, the local newspaper covers it up, driving her to quit her job. Wouldn't you know that on that very same night, she bumps into a woman named Gracie, whom she used to work with, who has "an even bigger story". Gracie was having an affair with Harrison Hill (Willis), the bigwig of a top-notch advertising agency, and things have gotten nasty. Hill, we learn, can't seem to keep his dick in his pants, and for reasons that only the screenwriters can understand, this entices Rowena go and check him out. Once Gracie turns up dead, Rowena and her partner Miles (the also underrated Giovanni Ribisi) find themselves smack-dab in the middle of a murder case with a damn good idea of who's behind it.

Rowena gets an internship job at Hill's advertising company a cooks up a relationship with him in an attempt to get closer to him so they can expose him for the perverted creep/murderer that he is…. DUN-DUN-DA! She starts with seducing him through internet chat rooms, typing sexy dialogue which we get to see on the screen and hear her voice out loud for those of us who are illiterate - the exact people who will think this film is any good (see, you gotta appeal to your target audience's needs). This goes on forever and ever and ever until his relationship with her becomes more personal and out in the open, and then that goes on forever and ever and ever.

And that's about it, lest you want me to reveal the twist ending, which I knew was coming but still didn't care once it arrived. There's also a back-story which reveals itself through flashbacks about Rowena's sexual abuse from her father which has absolutely nothing to do with anything unless you want to parallel the Willis character to him (look, a metaphor) which requires minimal brain power, but is still more than it deserves. All of which adds up to a completely forgettable film that's not worth your nine bucks. - Brandon Nease