When a childhood friend is brutally murdered, investigative reporter Rowena Price (Halle Berry) begins to suspect ad exec Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis), who was having an affair with the dead woman, is guilty of the crime. With the help of friend and tech nerd Miles Haley (Giovanni Ribisi), Rowena goes undercover as a temp in Harrison’s firm and begins a cyberspace affair with the exec, whose violent temper and ruthless business practices would certainly seem to indicate he’s capable of murder.

CRITIQUE

Perfect Stranger came and went in the blink of an eye earlier this year, and I doubt even the world of home video will be able to help this turkey turn a profit. Poorly written, badly acted, and listlessly directed, this is the sort of material that’s far more suited for a basic cable movie-of-the-week than it is a star-driven theatrical release.

The movie gets off to a poor start and gets worse as it goes along, wavering between being crushingly boring and laughably bad. The first scene has Berry (who has arguably never been more beautiful than she is here, but who has also arguably never given a worse performance) attempting to expose a senator who has repeatedly voted against laws protecting gay rights yet is carrying on an affair with a male page.

The scene isn’t believable for a second, primarily because the senator impossibly naïve and stupid, and the person who did the Photoshop work on the incriminating photos Berry has obviously didn’t bother to read the manual that came with the software. This is followed by a scene in a crowded bar during which Berry yells at her editor for quashing the story, a scene that contains some of the worst dialogue you’ll ever hear.

Both of these scenes raise a question the movie never addresses: How is Berry’s character able to keep her identity a secret? She uses a male pseudonym on the articles she pens (the paper she works for is obviously modeled on The New York Post), but how is it she’s never been exposed by any of her targets? Maybe it’s possible for such an incredibly attractive woman to perform such feats and still retain her anonymity, but I doubt it. 

Afterwards there’s a lot of nonsense regarding Rowena’s late friend’s affair with Rowena’s ex-boyfriend (a subplot that never pans out), some stuff regarding Hill’s suspicious wife (a subplot that never pans out), Hill’s Amazonian aide (a subplot that never pans out), and a helpful coworker who doles out chunks of clunky exposition and back story to Rowena whenever such information is necessary to the plot (most of which means nothing in the long run).

Hill (who notices Rowena simply because she is attractive, which again calls into question the subject of her anonymity) and Rowena spend an awful lot of time flirting in a chat room (which is even more boring than it sounds), and Haley performs the sort of hacking that won’t fool anyone who ever actually seen a computer.

There’s also the perfunctory scene in which Hill catches Rowena snooping around his office, only to have her come up with an excuse as to why she’s there. The explanation writers Jon Bokenkamp and Todd Komarnicki supply her as to why she’s in the office must be heard to be disbelieved (and the fact that Willis’s character buys it indicates he isn’t smart enough to be a shift manager at a Dunkin’ Donuts, much less the head of a prestigious ad agency).

And get this--there’s a scene in which Hill--in plain view of every one of his employees--fires a guy and then proceeds to slam the guy into the walls of his office and toss him over a desk. I swear.     

Perfect Stranger wouldn’t be a modern mystery-thriller if it didn’t contain a big twist in the final act, and the twist you get here is certainly memorable, but only because it’s yanked out of thin air and doesn’t make the least bit of sense. It’s been reported that the filmmakers concocted three possible endings for this movie, and I believe it. There are enough obvious red herrings here to provide a solution for world hunger, and the plot attempts to make virtually every character a suspect.

Of course, the roblem is, regardless of who the killer actually turns out to be, the story still isn’t going to add up, simply because by making everyone a possible suspect, no one becomes a likely suspect. There are absolutely no real clues to the identity of the killer (who, given the nature of the crime and subsequent events, would have to be clairvoyant to actually pull the plan off); what you get is a reveal, then a long, drawn-out scene in which another character explains to the killer exactly what went down.

And making matters worse is that the person giving the explanation would never have been privy to the information that led them to their epiphany. This isn’t a movie along the lines of The Usual Suspects or Fight Club, where if you go back you can see the construction and clues and the twist actually follows and makes sense in the context of what has come before; this is nothing more than the filmmakers playing hard and fast for ninety minutes and then tacking on an ending that’s intended to be seen as clever and surprising but actually isn’t the least bit clever, much less gratifying.

Perfect Stranger was directed by James Foley, who has directed such genuinely good films as At Close Range and Glengarry Glen Ross, but is also responsible for such duds as The Chamber and Who’s That Girl? This movie definitely belongs with the latter two. I know much of the fault lies with the screenplay, but you’d expect the director of Range and Glengarry to generate at least some suspense, and you’d also expect him to get decent performances out of his cast. Yet Foley does neither here.

Matter of fact, the only thing he does do right here is photograph Berry from behind and/or bent over as much possible. And while these moments are a veritable godsend in the midst of all the ineptitude, even they aren’t enough to make this movie worth sitting through.

THE VIDEO

The 2.40:1/1080p transfer generally looks fine, although some bleeding pops up on a few occasions (most noticeably in the restaurant scene; the reds behind Willis tend to run together and form a large blob). Colors are nicely saturated, black levels are solid, and the level of detail is often impressive.

THE AUDIO

Dialogue is the driving force of the audio here, and the uncompressed PCM 5.1 track handles this well for most of the movie’s running time, although there are moments when the dialogue sounds canned and hollow, especially during the opening twenty minutes or so (the first scene in the police station sounds as if it were recorded at the bottom of a well).

The only surround action comes from some score bleed and a few ambient effects; bass action is sparse. English and French Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks are also included; English, French, Korean, Thai, Chinese, Portuguese, and Spanish subtitles are available.

THE EXTRAS

The sole extra is Virtual Lives: The Making of Perfect Stranger (10 minutes), an EPK-style making of-featurette. It’s about as informative and objective as these things usually go (in other words: not at all), although Komarnicki’s attempt to psychoanalyze Berry’s character is good for a few laughs. This extra is presented in 1080p high definition video.

FINAL THOUGHT

Make no bones about it--Perfect Stranger is perfectly awful. Unless you’re dead set on charting the continued downward trajectory of Berry’s career, avoid this one.