Rowena learns from childhood pal Grace (Nicki Aycox) that she's been sleeping with Manhattan's lord of advertising, Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis, sporting a rug whose centerpiece appears to be an arrow pointing at its owner's forehead). To underscore the point, people are always saying things to the reporter like, 'Hey, you sure look great in that dress.' Have you noticed? I'm not saying anything the movie doesn't affirm every second. And speaking of figures, Berry's isn't too bad! No hag, she. Judging from her Upper West Side palace, the Courier gig (she writes under a male pseudonym) pays somewhere in the low eight figures. Then it's just ridiculous.īerry plays Rowena Price, investigative ace for a New York Post-y paper called the Courier. His good films include 'After Dark, My Sweet' and 'Glengarry Glen Ross.' This one's a couple of steps down: fairly diverting until it starts becoming ridiculous. Already we need an info-flashback to bail us out? This can't bode well for what screenwriter Todd Komarnicki has in store.įor a while 'Perfect Stranger' gets by on the furrowed-brow determination of its cast and the workmanlike sheen provided by the director, James Foley.

Two minutes after Halle Berry's reporter character meets up with an old friend, a cryptic gamin who dumps a steaming pile of scandalous backstory in Berry's lap, a snippet of their subway platform conversation is repeated for the benefit of narrative clarity. And speaking of flashbacks, 'Perfect Crime' sets a record for least amount of time elapsing between a plot point and its on-screen reiteration. Just hearing that news sent me into a 'Clue' flashback featuring Lesley Ann Warren with a candlestick in the billiard room. Rumor has it director James Foley shot three different solutions, indicting three different killers in the story's central murder. The surprise ending is such a pretzel, it may in fact still be ending. It's like watching a skater skid on his hindquarters straight across the ice, fwoomp, over the rail, clear past the penalty box and smack into the third row. For its big finish, the screwy erotic thriller 'Perfect Stranger' goes for the murder mystery equivalent of the double axel followed by a triple lutz, a quadruple toe loop and, for all I know, a quintuple bypass.

Perfect stranger movie twist