Perfect Stranger

Starring: Halle Berry, Bruce Willis, Giovanni Ribisi, Richard Portnow, Gary Dourdan

Directed by: James Foley

RS: 1of 4 Stars

2007 Sony Pictures All Movies

I need to begin with a shout out to James Foley for having directed three terrific movies: 1987's At Close Range, 1990's After Dark, My Sweet and1992's Glengarry Glen Ross, still the best screen version ever of a David Mamet play. Now for the bad news. Foley fights a losing battle with Perfect Stranger, a dull, dumb and unforgivably dated thriller, free of thrills and any kind of perfection, save a genius for product placement. Halle Berry and Bruce Willis, forced to compete with blatant plugs for Reebok, Heineken and Victoria's Secret, understandably give up all attempts at acting. Foley merely poses them like spears of prize broccoli. Berry plays a reporter trying to pin a murder on a married ad exec. You guessed it, Willis play the rich horndog with a jealous wife and a jones for finding fresh meat on Internet chat rooms. That's right, it's a techno thriller that treats the already clichéd topic of Web abuse with an idiotic sense of discovery. I won't go on, but the movie does with droning predictability.