Entertainment, Movies - Air Force Times

Shallow ‘Stranger’ fails to thrill

“Perfect Stranger” is an all-too-appropriate title for Halle Berry’s new film — every principal character is so unlikable that you very much want to keep them at arm’s length.

That’s a big first strike against any flick. But here’s where this purported “thriller” really whiffs: Not only are these characters impossible to root for; everything about them is simply not believable.

Start with the fact that Rowena Price (Berry), an investigative reporter for a New York City newspaper, lives in a large and fabulously appointed condo on Broadway and West 74th Street in Manhattan.

Folks, I have been a working journalist my entire adult life, and I can tell you that no print reporter whose name is not Bob Woodward could afford such a condo on the West Side.

In fact, most newspaper types live in the kind of ratty basement hovel occupied by Miles (Giovanni Ribisi), Rowena’s techno-geek sidekick — the movie cliché who can scale any firewall, hack any e-mail account and dig up the most obscure bits of information with just a few deft keystrokes.

But that’s just the beginning of this film’s false notes. It doesn’t take long to realize that Berry’s character isn’t just unlikable, she’s a stone-cold user who dons and sheds faces and moods the way other people do shoes.

Miles clearly carries a torch for her, but the only time she pays attention to him is when he comes up with helpful intel — after which she kicks him to the curb like an abused dog.

But Miles has lots of company. Rowena seems to treat most everyone with thinly veiled contempt. In one very odd moment, she exits her large and fabulously appointed condo building and shoots her doorman a brief, disgusted look — for no discernible reason.

Abrasive characters wouldn’t be so bad if the plot had zing. But there isn’t much zing in this thing.

Rowena is looking into the murder — involving extract of the poisonous plant belladonna, no less — of her childhood friend Grace (Nicki Aycox).

Shortly before her death, Grace told Rowena she was having an affair with high-profile ad agency executive Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis, phoning it in on a few of his trademark smirks).

Despite having a rich, beautiful, artistically gifted wife (Paula Miranda), Hill seems to be an obsessive-compulsive serial adulterer. Armed with a series of steamy Web-chat exchanges between Grace and “AdEx” — supposedly Hill — Rowena and Miles spend the bulk of the film trying to link their boy to Grace’s murder.

Rowena does this first by luring Hill into some racy — and, in the end, irrelevant — online chat herself (I’d like to take every Hollywood hack who thinks typing on computers makes for riveting drama and toss them in a deep pit), and then taking a temp job at his agency so she can pretend to let him seduce her.

Talk about investigative journalism!

At random intervals that are in keeping with the tenor of the film, director James Foley tosses in scenes of Rowena having steamy sex with her maybe-boyfriend Cameron (Gary Dourdan), while Miles jealously spies on her.

After spinning in place for an hour and 45 minutes, the filmmakers suddenly realize they have to wrap things up. They attempt to do this with a couple of big “twists” that are as arbitrary as they are absurd.

I won’t spill details, but it’s a derivation of the “nobody’s who they seem” riff. This is one of Hollywood’s stock templates — but it’s rarely been done to more tepid and less engrossing effect than it is here.

“Sincerity is everything,” Miles says in one scene. “Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

Yes, and “Perfect Stranger” has a whole lotta fakin’ going on.

1½ stars. Rated R for violence, language and sexuality. Opens April 13.