Perfect Stranger
By Three Monkeys
When the killer is finally revealed, at the end of this murder mystery, one character remarks "that's beautiful, that's fucking poetry". I could'nt think of two less appropriate terms for what's on offer. The dènoument, if one is prepared to call it that, could have just as easily been from one of those snide Hollywood parodies that crawl out periodically - 'and then I remembered how you said that your mother had a run down chemist shop where you could take anything you wanted without being noticed'. The end of the film provides a flimsy surprise, built as it is on clues that were absent from the film, but in truth the only surprising thing about the film is how Halle Berry and Bruce Willis were convinced to take part. Are they down on their respective luck? Was blackmail involved?
Like most truly awful films, there are a lot of ingredients bouncing around that, in themselves, could have produced an interesting film. We have new and aged chestnuts like private vs public morality, internet dating, and stalking married with the evils of corporate America, sex abuse, and feminism. All are treated flippantly in a story that's punctuated with improbabilities, patches, and clunky lines that you have the horrible feeling were produced somewhere by a self-satisfied committee.
Halle Berry plays a top journalist who, at the start of the story has one of her stories spiked by a cowering editor (she uncovers the homosexuality of a family values senator). A powerful man protected by powerful men - that's the feminism checkbox ticked. While licking her wounds, an old friend who is involved with a powerful advertising executive, played by Bruce Willis, turns up murdered. Berry, with the aid of her obligatory sinister-nerdy-geek friend, decides to investigate. So far, so predictable, and so it goes.
If you're thinking of going to see this, or renting if on one of those occasions when there's nothing else in the video store - don't.
Printable
version |
Email this review |
Send comments
Digg
this review | Add
this review to del.icio.us | Add
this article to reddit | Add
this review to google bookmarks
Other Stories
These articles from Three Monkeys Online may interest you.Bootleg Chomsky Meets the Big Societal Novel - Robert Newman talks about The Fountain at the Centre of the World
Robert Newman's third novel, The Fountain at the Centre of the World is set against a backdrop of globalisation, world trade, and political protest. Newman, a succesful stand up comic, answers questions on polemics, petrol, politics and Dickens, in this Three Monkeys Online interview.
The Leopard and the Fox - Tariq Ali and the BBC
The year was 1986, the subject Pakistan and its military coup of 1977, and the outcome a thoroughly British case of cold war sponsored censorship by the BBC. Tariq Ali discusses with Three Monkeys Online the circumstances behind the censoring of his drama The Leopard and the Fox, the dramatic
Iraq Death Toll in Third Year of Occupation is Highest Yet
Three years on from the Invasion of Iraq, and the human cost of this war is still unclear. While information on civilian deaths is still unforthcoming from the US & UK governments, the Iraq Body Count provides important figures.
The Final Word: Fictional spaces, Death and Literature. Mervyn Peake and the Gormenghast trilogy
Death as a fictionalised experience allies itself harmoniously with literary fiction. Both are spaces of invention and both seek to fill what is essentially an ever-present void of abstraction. A perfect example of the marriage between death and literary fiction is the Gormenghast Trilogy by writer
Reproduction of material from any ThreeMonkeysOnline pages without written permission is strictly prohibited
Copyright © ThreeMonkeysOnline.com
All rights reserved. ThreeMonkeysOnline
