Perfect Stranger (2007) Review

"Do you have any idea what loyalty is?"

-Harrison Hill

"I bet your wife is wondering the same thing."

-Rowena Price

Ace reporter, Rowena Price (Halle Berry), quits her job after her editor puts a stop to her incriminating story about a Senator.  With her schedule now cleared, she is approached by her childhood friend, Grace Clayton (Nicki Aycox), who she has had a falling out with.  Grace had been having an affair with advertising executive, Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis), but he ended things and shut her out.  Now Grace wants Ro's help in taking Hill down.  When Grace turns up dead, Ro is immediately suspicious of Hill and recruits her friend and former coworker, Miles Hayley (Giovanni Ribisi), to investigate.  But things quickly get darker and more depraved than anyone could have expected.

What Works:

This section will be brief, but I had high hopes after the opening sequence.  I thought it was a solid introduction for Berry's character.  We got to see her take on a hypocritical politician and it was really satisfying and it actually pumped me up for the rest of the movie.  Unfortunately, this was the peak of the film.

Bruce Willis does a fine job.  It's not anything spectacular, but that's miles ahead of the rest of the cast and he has a few moments of solid acting.  Plus, it's a bit of a different type of role for him, which was somewhat interesting.

Finally, there was one funny scene where Ro is instant messaging with who she assumes is Harrison Hill, and her commentary compared to what she is actually writing is mildly amusing and occasionally funny.

What Sucks:

The main relationship of this film is between Ro and Miles.  Ro sees Miles as a friend, but she's also really a jerk to him sometimes.  Miles is completely obsessed with Ro, to some seriously alarming levels, and he is a jerk right back to her.  For people who are supposed to be friends, they rarely act like it in this film, and their negative relationship really puts a damper on my enjoyment of the movie.

The whole initial set-up for the plot of kind of odd.  Grace was sleeping with a married man and ended the affair, so now Grace wants help getting revenge on him, so she gets her reporter friend to help.  This isn't a news-worthy story, so when this scene initially happened, I could not figure out why on Earth Ro would show any inclination to help.  It's eventually explained in the twist ending, but to have such weird character motivation when you are establishing your protagonist is not great storytelling.

The vast majority of this movie is boring and miserable to watch.  We have these two terrible people investigating a man who may have murdered Grace, who is a pretty unlikeable character herself, and we don't care about her at all.  So, the story itself is uninteresting, but the execution makes it even worse.  None of the investigation scenes are very compelling until Ro discovers Miles' secret room in his apartment.  The whole Harrison Hill storyline is simply boring and the characters are miserable to be around.  Again, not good storytelling.  You have to either make us care about the characters or engage us with an interesting story, and Perfect Stranger does neither.

Finally, and I don't know if this should be in the "What Sucks" section or the "What Works" section, because, while it's absolutely horrendous filmmaking, it's incredibly entertaining, the final twist of the movie is 100% WTF.  Here come the spoilers...

Halle Berry was the killer the entire time!  What the hell?!  This twist comes out of nowhere and I wasn't expecting it in any way, shape, or form.  It makes some kind of sense, I guess, but there was no set up for this.  It makes me want to go back and watch the movie and see if Halle Berry's motivations throughout the film make any sense, but I suspect they don't.  The twist and the execution of the reveal are simply bizarre and I found myself screaming, "WHAT?!" at my TV multiple times.

Verdict:

The twist is memorable, but not in a good way, the opening sequence is solid, and Bruce Willis is fine, but this movie sucks.  It's boring, miserable, and doesn't make much sense.  It's not engaging on any level, the characters are terrible people, and it's simply not a fun experience.

 3/10: Really Bad