Perfect Stranger

Even if there were twenty different versions of the film's ending, it would still be a boring and cliché mess, where the only thing of interest is Halle Berry's looks and Bruce Willis's convincingly played corporate president. A thriller about nothing, poorly executed, lacking dynamics and drive, and not very skillfully written, either, that's roughly Perfect Stranger in a nutshell. Those who like a proper surprise at the end should watch The Sixth Sense instead. Foley simply doesn't know how to create the necessary atmosphere, and even the potentially best scene is lost due to a sterile approach. (04/10/2008)

Not a particularly bad film, and not a particularly good one either, which - if it weren't for the central cast - nobody might normally care about. Perfect Stranger has an interesting start, a slightly boring middle and a good finale with a pretty clever point. It's too bad about the unimaginative direction and drama that was originally supposed to be in the film, but just before the shooting started, the bitch changed her mind, packed up and left. Very, very far away. Three average stars. (19/08/2010)

My admiration goes to Giovanni Ribisi. I have been following this person since "Friends" and I must say that I like him more with each subsequent film. True, he often gets roles as crazy idiots, more like comedic characters, but when he finally gets something where he can act, he is great. This is the case here. An unremarkable character who occasionally perfectly captures attention. In the company of Halle Berry, it's not that difficult because, let's face it, she mainly acts with her body and she's not such a great actress or at least doesn't try as hard. Dice already has an Oscar in her hands, but there are only a few films in which she convinced me that she didn't give up on acting. It's nice that she takes on costumes that highlight her character, but on the other hand, it seems too little to me. Bruce Willis is playing his optimum, and besides, he is a negative character, at least partly for sure. The film is in line with Giovanni Ribisi, who is great and interested me, but it's actually just a side story. More important is the investigation that the character, a journalist played by Berry, conducts into the murderer of her friend. She gets involved in a rather interesting game with unnecessary characters whose only task is to obscure the plot. Once we learn the point of the film, everything good that the film could bring falls apart, and "Unknown Temptress" becomes just an ordinary action thriller that couldn't be corralled in the end. It played too much on the point, which is so horrifically bad that it's not nice. It turns the film upside down, but without the shock that movies like "The Sixth Sense" or "The Others" had. The film doesn't have such a good flow, it's not well thought out, to perfectly fit everything together in the end. It's just a hint of a good film that was lost in unnecessary effort - incompetence - to shock the viewer, who is already accustomed to various things. More: http://www.filmovy-denik.cz/2012/11/arbitrage-interview-male-deti-neznamy.html (02/03/2013)