Movie Review Perfect Stranger

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.

Movie Review: Basic

Basic (2003)

Directed by John McTiernan 

Written by James Vanderbilt 

Starring John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Connie Nielsen, Taye Diggs, Giovanni Ribisi, Tim Daly 

Release Date March 28th, 2003 

Published March 27th, 2003 

Just over a year ago, director John McTiernan hit a career low point that made The Last Action Hero look like an Oscar winner. The 2002 remake of Rollerball was a painful cinematic experience for the audience and probably the filmmaker as well. McTiernan soldiers on, literally in fact, with his new military thriller Basic. Re-teaming Pulp Fiction partners John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson, McTiernan has improved on his last effort; then again, how could he not?

Travolta, back in military mode for the first time since 1999 trash thriller The General's Daughter, here plays another troubled outsider called into the military fold to investigate a murder. Sergeant Nathan West(Jackson) and a group of six recruits went into the jungle training grounds of Panama and only two people came back. Both men, Lieutenant Kendell(Giovanni Ribisi) and Lieutenant Dunbar (Brian Van Holt) say Sergeant West was killed, but that is where the similarities in their stories end. While Travolta's Tom Hardy--who is paired with a military investigator, Lieutenant Osborne (Connie Nielsen)--interrogates each man, two very different stories evolve as time ticks away before the FBI and military police step in and take the case over.

The camp commander, Colonel Styles (Tim Daly), needs the case cracked before the Feds get there or the camp will be shut down. Of course, his motives come into question, as do the motives of everyone in the film, as the plot begins to spin out of control with flashback on top of flashback. The film's plot is based on so many lucky guesses and well-timed confessions, that by the time it arrives at its final twist, you're too exhausted to care. Whether it was too much editing and settling for shorthand clues that the audience never sees or simply a poorly-constructed plot one is left to wonder.

If you are looking for a Pulp Fiction reunion, there isn't much to get excited about Travolta and Jackson share very little screen time. However, Travolta is well teamed with Nielsen. The two spark with flirty dialogue even while at each other's throat over who is in charge. Travolta is in full-on cool mode, much like his performance in Broken Arrow--all swagger, bravado, and charisma. Jackson, on the other hand, though he is played up as a star, really only has a cameo in the film. He's barely there. In typical Sam Jackson manner, he still manages to make an impression.

Of course, if one is to compare Basic to any of Travolta's past films, the obvious one is The General's Daughter. In both films, Travolta plays a cop on the outskirts of the military called into an investigation that could lead to a scandal. Both are murder investigations with mysterious circumstances and witnesses with conflicting accounts and there is even a soldier with a powerful general for a father who wants things to keep quiet. Thankfully, the general remains off screen. The difference between Basic and The General's Daughter is entertainment value. 

Where Basic tires you with twist after twist, The General's Daughter has the advantage of salacious subject matter and trashy novelizations to titillate the audience and distract from the formula thriller twists. Basic doesn't have that to fall back on and thus, outside of Travolta, it's just no fun. The further I get from the film, the more the cracks in the plot become big gaping holes. Unlike many critics though, I cannot lay all the blame with screenwriter James Vanderbilt because some of these ideas, especially the ending, seem to have been made up as they went along.

Basic is an improvement for John McTiernan over Rollerball. (Then again, repertory theater versions of Rollerball would improve over that film.) McTiernan is in a slump and rumors of a Die Hard sequel are out there. Maybe a return to such familiar ground is what the man needs. That or maybe just a nice long vacation.

Movie Review: Contraband

Contraband (2012) 

Directed by Baltasar Kormakur 

Written by Aaron Guzikowski

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Kate Beckinsale, Giovanni Ribisi, Caleb Landry Jones, J.K Simmons, Ben Foster 

Release Date January 12th, 2012 

Published January 11th, 2012 

Contraband is a mediocre action movie that rises above mediocre because Mark Wahlberg is so darn compelling. I've been a Mark Wahlberg fan for years; despite his having starred in such duds as The Happening, Maxx Payne, and Shooter. Wahlberg simply has that intangible star quality that makes you want to follow him on whatever film journey he's taking. Contraband could not survive with a lesser star.

Chris Farraday (Wahlberg) was once known as the Houdini of the smuggling world. With his sidekick Sebastian (Ben Foster), Farraday could smuggle anything without ever getting caught. Now, Farraday is a civilian, running his own security company, happily married to Kate (Kate Beckinsale) and raising two sons. He’s gone soft, he’s gone legit, and anyone who’s ever seen a movie about a bad guy gone good already knows where Contraband is headed. 

Yup, Farraday is dragged back into the smuggling underworld when his boneheaded brother in law Andy (Caleb Landry Jones) pulls a drug smuggling job and ends up dumping the drugs in the river when Customs boards his boat. Not surprisingly, Andy's employer, Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi), is none too happy and he wants Chris to pay Andy's debt or else. Pulled back into the business, Farraday calls on Sebastian for one more run. 

There are no surprises in this set up; Contraband is not original or unexpected. What works in Contraband is the businesslike, conservative approach of director Baltasar Kormakur who gets down to the business of smuggling with only the most necessary bits of exposition. When Mark Wahlberg and his crew finally get on a ship ready to smuggle the pace is methodical and to the point.

Giovanni Ribisi is not exactly the most intimidating bad guy one could imagine and this does undermine a few scenes where he's supposed to be playing tough. One scene that will test an audience's ability to suspend belief finds the wiry Ribisi pushing around Kate Beckinsale. Anyone who's seen and enjoyed the Underworld movies knows Kate Beckinsale could snap Ribisi like a twig if she wanted.

(Yes, I'm aware that movie magic makes Beckinsale a badass vampire in "Underworld;" I was being cute.)

The key to raising Contraband above other, similar action thrillers is Mark Wahlberg. Since his bold and ballsy Oscar nominated work in The Departed Wahlberg has really come into his own as a movie star and that movie star quality is the one thing working in favor of Contraband. Without Mark Wahlberg, Contraband is an exceptionally average movie. See "Contraband" for Mark Wahlberg or maybe to chuckle at Giovanni Ribisi's tattooed tough guy; both are strong reasons to see "Contraband."

Movie Review Lost in Translation

Lost in Translation (2003) 

Directed by Sophia Coppola 

Written by Sophia Coppola 

Starring Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray, Giovanni Ribisi, Anna Faris

Release Date September 12th, 2003 

Published September 12th, 2003 

Subtlety, a lost art. In the age of Austin Powers and Scary Movie, some would say it's not lost but dead. Before we pass such a judgment though, I would urge you to see Lost In Translation, a subtle, humorous meditation on alienation and intimacy between two strangers in a strange land.

Bill Murray stars in Lost In Translation as Bob Harris, an aging movie star arriving in Japan to shoot a liquor commercial. Staying in the same hotel is Charlotte (Scarlett Johannsen), the wife of a photographer (Giovanni Ribisi) who's work leaves her to roam the foreign country alone. As both Bob and Charlotte wallow in their loneliness and alienation they find each other in the hotel bar and commiserate over being the only English speakers in the room.

It's unclear whether Charlotte recognizes Bob the movie star, but she seems to immediately know Bob the person. Their connection happens quickly but not in the sexual way of most movies. It is an intellectual connection between two smart sardonic people who bond over conversation not carnality.

The plot description for Lost in Translation is difficult because of it's pseudo verite style. In almost documentary fashion we watch these two characters bond over their mutual intelligence and isolation. Director Sophia Coppola does a spectacular job of drawing the audience into a story that is essentially a series of conversations and gestures. It's remarkably absorbing.

Coppola also wrote the smart witty script and then went out and got two terrific actors to interpret it. Bill Murray has never been better. He's always had a terrific slow comic burn but here he doesn't lapse into schtick, he simply accepts the various indignities and we sympathize with him rather than laugh at his reactions. Johannsen, only 19 years old, is Murray's equal in every scene. Showing intelligence beyond her years, she is as smart as she is attractive.

This is a second brilliant outing for writer-director Sophia Coppola and as much as I loved her first film, The Virgin Suicides, I loved Lost In Translation even more. Coppola is not only a talented writer, she has a terrific directorial eye that is very subtle but definitely true. There are a number of terrific visuals in Lost In Translation with equal credit going to Coppola and Cinematographer Lance Acord.

This is a truly remarkable film. Smart, funny, sweet and beautiful. Believe the hype about this one, it's truly one of the best films of the year.