Halle Berry provides eye candy in Perfect Stranger.
Herald rating: * *
Verdict: Tedious shallow thriller, at once obscure and obvious, in which Halle Berry shows more skin than acting chops.
To declare a prejudice: I didn't much care for Halle Berry's Oscar-winning turn as a desperate widow in Monster's Ball. I was really glad for every "woman of colour" she said it was going to inspire and I was happy for her lawyer and all, but it was
an unsubtle, second-rate performance in a third-rate movie.
This film made me look back fondly at that one, though. A laboured exercise in product placement and voyeurism that manages to be both obvious and obscure, it is further evidence that Berry is too pretty for Hollywood to take seriously.
That much is plain from the many gratuitous shots of her flesh - the most outrageous a lingering study of her selecting and donning her knickers - which serve no plot function at all.
Berry is the major product getting placement in this film but Sony (the parent company of the studio), Reebok (which is in a commercial partnership with Sony) and Victoria's Secret all get an insulting amount of screen time.
Berry plays Rowena Price, a kickass journo on a scandal sheet who believes she can nail the smooth, smirking advertising tycoon Harrison Hill (Willis) for the murder of a childhood friend. But as Oscar Wilde said, the truth is rarely pure and never simple.
That's a better line than you'll find anywhere in this film, which frantically semaphores big moments with lines like "everybody has secrets until they get caught" but still has to have one character spend five minutes explaining everything to another character (who already knows it all) so we will understand at the end.
Director Foley, whose only decent film was Glengarry Glen Ross, goes through the motions.
As a showreel of Berry getting dressed and undressed it's not bad. As a thriller, it's about as exciting as a flat tyre.
Cast: Halle Berry, Bruce Willis, Giovanni Ribisi
Director: Steve Foley.
Running time: 109 mins
Rating: R16, violence, offensive language.
Screening: Everywhere.
