Perfect Stranger

Lest you get the idea that Perfect Stranger is nuanced and intelligent, it is mainly a tawdry detective thriller about the perils of Internet dating and wooden acting. The most realistic element is the fake barf that accompanies the heroine's viewing of her friend's decomposed torso. It is viscid with a hint of chunkiness: top-drawer.

Halle Berry stars as Rowena, journalist for a New York City paper. Berry fits the "looking" theme well, because the film depicts her as highly attractive when still and annoyingly shrill when required to seem anything but blank. Rowena's "getting tipsy" is pretty much the same as her "intense and focused investigator".

After the murder rudely awakens the viewer, Rowena proceeds to do what anyone would do with material knowledge of the victim and the motive for her murder: she shuns the police and tries to solve the case herself. Drawing upon the omniscient computing skills of her hacker buddy Miles (Giovanni Ribisi, frantically attempting to generate suspense and tension), Rowena fabricates a new identity and has herself hired as a secretary to the likely killer, Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis).

Though it is not for me to say how James Foley should have directed his film, it seems strange that there are no characters that you don't immediately loathe. For audience-sympathy reasons, that might have been a good thing. Do the reckless, unethical journalist and her emasculated dweeb successfully discover the secrets of the cruel, philandering executive? How can we care?

Instead of characters, we get "surprise" twists, which are of the infuriating sort that disclose all of the necessary information in flashback. About the only genuinely clever part of Perfect Stranger is that the villain is an ad man, allowing product placements to flow from the story itself.