Perfect Stranger

Perfect Stranger (2007)

Runtime: 109 minutes

Directed by: James Foley

Starring: Halle Berry, Bruce Willis, Giovanni Ribisi, Richard Portnow, Gary Dourdan

From: Revolution Studios

Would you believe I've seen this crappy movie once before, and at a drive-in? I went to a sketchy drive-in in Tampa (not the best part of Tampa, by the way) and before I watched Grindhouse there-yes it was a great experience-I had a few selections as to what I could watch first and I randomly picked this one; trust me, the choices were slim pickings. I saw last night it was on cable so I figured I should watch it again. No, it has nothing to do with the old TV show Perfect Strangers (Larry nor Balki are anywhere to be seen) and you don't hear the Deep Purple song Perfect Strangers either.

To steal the plot description from the IMDb: “A journalist goes undercover to ferret out businessman Harrison Hill as her childhood friend's killer. Posing as one of his temps, she enters into a game of online cat-and-mouse.” There's more to it than that but that's the plot in essence. Other things include the stereotype of a corrupt conservative senator, spyware, and daiquri's.

At the time I thought the movie was pretty crappy, and after seeing it again, it's still a crappy film. In fact, it's actually worse than I remembered. It's supposed to be a “sexy thriller” but it's not sexy or really all that thrilling either. The story is about a young lady being murdered and you end up with a boring slog where Berry goes undercover in an ad agency office and the boss is a clearly there for only a paycheck Bruce Willis and Giovani Ribisi is a computer nerd/hacker type.

A big problem is that you don't like any of  the characters at all; Halle Berry's character... I don't want to be misogynistic here, but she's a real rude and unlikable person and I'll leave it at that. It's an issue when she's the lead person and you're supposed to be rooting for her. Willis is just a blank slate as a sleazy guy who may have done some bad things. Ribisi is an ass more than anything else. That makes caring about the dull as dishwater story even more of an impossible task. Also, the characters act pretty stupid and make some mistakes that'll make you shake your head with embarrassment, or maybe with disgust.

You get some cybersex action and watching random people do it... not exciting or titillating. Nor is the romance stuff you see throughout. I guess they rather wanted to spend time on getting blatant advertisements from Reebok, Victoria's Secret and Heineken than coming up with a better story or better characters.

But what really ruins things is the resolution of the story. It's one of those movies that thought it HAD to have a twist ending, even if one was unnecessary. This one in particular is extremely nonsensical and it invalidates what you had spent watching for the past almost 2 hours; it's totally illogical. Plus, it adds an additional layer of unpleasantness to the whole affair. That is the reason why I rate this as low as I do; without the twist the rating would be bad, but that ending makes it even lower (I will only give it 1 star out of 5 on Letterboxd). To think that this director's work includes At Close Range, Glengarry Glen Ross, and now some episodes of House of Cards. At least this didn't kill his career forever.

I'll return Friday night.