Perfect Stranger (2007)
Directed by James Foley
Written by Todd Komarnicki
Starring Halle Berry, Bruce Willis, Giovanni Ribisi, Gary Dourdan
Release Date April 13th, 2007
Published April 12th, 2007
The film is called Perfect Stranger but, sadly, Bronson Pinchot and Mark Linn Baker are nowhere to be found. Without question, after watching this basic cable reject thriller starring Halle Berry and Bruce Willis; I would have much preferred a big screen update of the small screen fish out of water comedy Perfect Strangers than the seemy, lurid, sleazy melodrama Perfect Stranger.
If you weren't buying the idea of an Oscar curse after last week's Hillary Swank debacle The Reaping it should become an undeniable fact after you see Halle Berry in Perfect Stranger.
When her childhood friend Grace (Nicki Aycox) is found to be the murderer, investigative journalist Roweena Price (Halle Berry) decides to go undercover and get the man she believes is responsible. His name is Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis) a high powered ad executive with a penchant for women who are not his wife and a kinky fascination with online chatting.
With the help of her newspaper researcher and computer wiz, Miles (Giovonni Ribisi), Roweena creates two different false identities, one is Catherine Pogue who takes a temp job in Hill's ad agency. The other is the online persona of Veronica who engages Hill online and uses his love on dirty talk against him. Can she get him to admit to murder or at least divulge incriminating details? That would be what a logical story arc might require, but that is not what you can expect from Perfect Stranger.
Directed by James Foley, Perfect Stranger is an unending sleazefest. A movie so icky you will need a shower afterward. Foley's idea of building a contentious, titillating thriller is to craft the worst possible set of characters and awkwardly aim them at one another. Then, when that gets dull, he simply trains his camera, uneasily, on the near naked form of Halle Berry in scenes so creepy that even the attractive Ms. Berry comes off sleazy.
What Bruce Willis was doing in Perfect Stranger is anyone's guess. This is the most ineffectual and forgettable performance of Willis' career, a career that includes both Hudson Hawk and Color of Night. The charismatic Diehard star here is wooden and lost in a sea of tawdry, basic cable cliches. His high powered ad man is basically a plot placeholder whose actions barely give context to this goofball thriller plot.
Giovonni Ribisi is the most effortlessly creepy actor working today. Whether it's his rat- like features or those serial killer eyes, he has that creep quality that makes him perfect for creepy roles in movies like Perfect Stranger. So, why then does director James Foley feel it's necessary to try and make him even creepier than he already is? In Perfect Stranger, Ribisi is allegedly a good guy and yet he may be the sleaziest of the sleazy characters in the film.
On top of a goofball thriller plot that employs one of the least believable, or logical, twists you've ever seen, director James Foley and writer Todd Komarnicki also toss in political scandal and a war protest. The film opens with a ludicrous exchange between Berry's undercover 'reporter' and a Republican Senator from New York whom she's got the goods on in an intern scandal ala the Mark Foley. Representative Foley from Florida is not related to director James Foley; as far as I know.
What is the point of Perfect Stranger? It's not entertaining, the characters are too sleezy for this to be conventionally entertaining. Is it supposed to be titillating? I assume so but with all of the sleeze poured onto the screen any and all attempts at being sexy or alluring are undone. Even the unbelievably beautiful Halle Berry is hard to admire in Perfect Stranger because of the way the camera doesn't capture her but rather leers at her in the way a dirty old man might watch a stripper.
Perfect Stranger is a sleezed out; late night cable movie dressed in big budget Hollywood clothes. Any movie that could make a man uncomfortable while ogling Halle Berry is clearly one big creepy mess. Admittedly, there is a twisted part of my psyche that wants you dear reader to see this movie just so you too can experience one of most outlandish, ludicrous twist endings ever put to film.
Rumor has it that director James Foley filmed three different endings for Perfect Stranger with three different twists. If this is the one he thought was the best; one can only imagine the laugh out-loniness of the endings he rejected. Maybe those endings will be on the DVD, in which case a camp classic of awfulness could be in the making.
