Review: Perfect Stranger

April 11th 2007, 12:00am

After the gruesome death of her childhood friend, an investigative reporter goes undercover as a temp at an elite advertising agency (packed with hotties) in the hopes of bringing down the killer, who just happens to be the President of the company. A lot of beautiful well-dressed women, campy internet sex chatting, intrigue, deception and a twist ending (meh) ensue.

Why, why, why Halle? Why did you make this movie? As Berrilicious as you are, it’s like you’re taking two steps back with this one. This movie really blew! It was all over the place, you didn’t care for any of the characters and I think it was supposed to be a “murder mystery” with a little bit of sex, but instead of actual sex, there was a lot of actual sex talk. If you’re going to try to make a movie like this, use BASIC INSTINCT as a template, please. There was no real build-up here or any real indication of who the killer might be. Yes, they obviously provided us with the usual suspects, but you didn’t really care and I was just waiting for the end of the movie so that I can go “Ohhhh, that’s who did it…I knew it the whole time.” Yeah, whatever. Quite frankly, the whole thing was kinda boring.

The characters were uninteresting and the ones that had even a little potential, they blew off. A perfect example was Bruce Willis’ personal watchdog/hot lesbian assistant. She had “something”, I mean she could have been the Boba Fett of this movie. But alas…she was misused.

Halle Berry, who plays Ro the undercover reporter, was so sporadic and extremely annoying with her outbursts, that she did no justice to her character. Her hotness just isn’t enough to carry this film, folks! Even Giovanni Ribisi was crap, and I think he’s a great actor. He plays Berry’s researcher/assistant who is knowledgeable of all things computer hacking related and he also happens to be in love with her. No joke, he was practically whining throughout the whole movie!! Maybe, that’s just the sound of his voice, but it was like scratches on a chalk-board the whole time. It irked me to no end. Finally, Mr. Willis who plays Harrison Hill, the Ad agency guy, was nothing special. I think ol’ Bruce should just stick to playing action heroes and ghosts. Anyone could have played this character.

This is one of those movies where it really seemed like they re-wrote the ending several times before they decided on this one. Even then, the “big twist” was nothing to write about and more importantly, not very memorable. Like I stated earlier, this whole movie just felt “off”, like it was pieced together wrong. It didn’t flow and the script was horrible, “To perform the perfect murder, all you need is the right ingredients at the right time.” Yeah…lines like that.

Chalk up another crap film for the 2007 roster. It’s not even a free renter. I just hope the fine actors that were in this film will be able to bounce back. I’m embarrassed for them!