Halle Berry is one of those actresses that will bomb a lot… but then once in a while pulls a load of talent out of her ass and completely blows you away with a performance. She’s done that to me a couple of times, and it usually comes along just when you’re about to give up on her.
So here comes her new film with Bruce Willis (who I always enjoy seeing) “Perfect Stranger“. Unlike most people, I thought this movie showed some promise.
Berry plays Ro, a highly successful newspaper reporter who writes under a male alias (for reasons that I don’t quite understand). One night, Ro is approached by an old friend, Grace, who tells her that she had a secret affair with one of New York’s most famous Ad execs, Harrison Hill (Played by Bruce Willis), but that he has subsequently kicked her to the curb and doesn’t return her calls anymore because he’s married. Grace want’s revenge on Harrison and wants Ro’s help. Ro pretty much ignores Grace’s request, until Grace turns up dead a week later. Now Ro is out to prove Harrison killed her friend.
The idea and premise of the film is promising enough. A bit cliche and done before… but not bad as a starting point for an idea for a film, and for parts of the film it’s executed pretty well… but not enough of it.
The two biggest weakness of this movie are its beginning and its end. Much of the narrative in the middle is actually pretty good… but not good enough to compensate.
The beginning of the film shows us Ro at work trying to bust some powerful guy… but it’s basically nothing more that political point making for no damn reason with HORRIBLE dialog that I cant believe anyone actually wrote. It’s difficult to explain without giving too much away, but it’s enough to say it was such a terrible and cheesy beginning that you almost wrote the movie off right from the start, and suddenly now the movie has to fight to win you back.
The main body of the film isn’t too bad… but like I said in the previous paragraph, it took nearly 15-20 minutes of it just to get me interested again. It should be pointed out that the performances of both Halle Berry and Bruce Willis were pretty good. Willis in particular plays that suave charming dude with a mean streak role that he’s done a few times… but pulls it off well.
The film tries to compensate for its lack of any real mystery with tension and intensity, and it should be said that they almost pulled it off. The cinematic tension is done pretty well in a couple of scenes and a couple of the exchanges between the character had a palatable intensity to them that I thought were done with an almost “Fatal Attraction” flavor.
However, mystery in a film (this isn’t a rule… just a generalization) builds when the director begins to drop hints, clues and facts that allows the audience to develops its own theories and ideas about the mystery at hand. Drawing us in and making us a part of puzzle in a sense. Unfortunately, Perfect Stranger just seems to feed the audience self-evident yet often inconsistent pieces of information that doesn’t bring the audience along for the ride. That leads to the biggest weakness of Perfect Stranger…
The ending. This next thought MIGHT seems like a spoiler of sorts (but it’s really not) so read ahead with a little caution. “Surprise” or “Twist” endings… or really any ending to a film that relies on some big “reveal” at the finish, works best when the audience can sit back and say “oh yeahhhhh” as they reflect on all the hints and tips the director has given along the way. The best ones are the ones where you COULD have guessed it, but probably didn’t (like Sixth Sense did so perfectly).
However, Perfect Stranger hits us WWAAYYY out of left field with an ending that you could never have truly guessed because of the earlier mistakes of failing to bring us along for the ride by giving relevant pieces of information along the way. So when the big “Reveal” hits us at the end… instead of making us say “Oh yeahhhh” it leaves us saying “What the F*ck?”
Overall, Perfect Stranger is a well paced, decently performed, sometimes intense movie that sadly loses itself to periods of ridiculous dialog, a failure to get the audience engaged in the “mystery” and a terrible ending that leaves you feeling like watching the whole film was a waste of time because the director never gave you the information or hints you would have needed to guess the ending until the “Reveal” itself happens. Very unsatisfying. I give Perfect Stranger a 5 out of 10, and out of “No”, “Go” or “Routh”… I say “No”.
