Cyber-stupid

>> Pseudo-softcore Perfect Stranger
is a straight-to-video-calibre thriller

by MARK SLUTSKY

Bruce Willis as Balki Bartokomous? In a perfect world, maybe. When I saw that he was starring in a new film called Perfect Stranger, that was the first thing that came to mind. And when I found out that Halle Berry was starring opposite him, I even entertained the idea of her in the “Cousin Larry” role, in a daringly transgressive change of gender à la the female Starbuck in the new iteration of Battlestar Galactica.

Sound crazy? Well, you might be thinking crazy thoughts too if you’d had to sit through the non-imaginary version of Perfect Stranger, a straight-to-video-calibre thriller that somehow managed to attract star power far, far above its dim wattage. And if it seems like I’m trying to put off writing about it, or even thinking about it, for as long as I can, that’s because I am.

But there’s only so much of that I can do, so here’s the deal: Halle Berry plays Rowena Price, a high-powered investigative journalist for a New York Post-like tabloid. When a childhood friend of hers with a big secret about ad exec Harrison Hill (Willis) shows up dead, Berry decides to go undercover and pin it on Willis by both getting a job at his ad agency and engaging in nightly chat sessions with him. As in, online sex talk, that least cinematic form of seduction.

Soon all sorts of boring stuff is happening with her obsessive buddy Miles (Giovanni Ribisi)... and I think she has this boyfriend... and there’s this tall lesbian in the ad agency who’s supposed to do something... and there’s all sorts of passionate typing of emoticons... It all feels disconnected and there’s pretty much zero tension or characterization, with no one really seeming to care what the outcome is going to be.

Of course there’s a twist—a few, actually—but by that point you should be past all caring. Ultimately, Perfect Stranger feels like a Bleu Nuit movie—the devastatingly attractive ad exec, the passionate reporter under a false identity, the cyber-dirty-talk, the sexy artist character who takes pictures of people’s eyes—but without the sex or nudity. Strip the sitcom associations and even the title sounds like a softcore porno. If only!

Perfect Stranger opens this Friday, April 13

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