CNET Networks Entertainment GameSpot | GameFAQs | SportsGamer | Metacritic | MP3.com | TV.com
Home | About Metacritic | About Metascores | What's New | Wireless Versions | Discussion Forums | Advertising Inquiries | Contact Us | RSS
Metacritic.com: We Deal With Criticism
     Help
> Switch to Advanced Search  
Film Video/DVD Music Games TV

Film

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

 

Wide Releases

sort by name sort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 

Limited Releases

sort by name sort by score

85 Alexandra
xx All of Us
53 Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert
57 Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela, The
40 America the Beautiful
66 American Teen
74 Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer
63 Appaloosa
xx Ashes of Time Redux
65 August Evening
xx Bachna Ae Haseeno
62 Baghead
81 Ballast
55 Battle in Seattle
59 Beautiful Losers
xx Beer for My Horses
47 Before the Rains
80 Bigger, Stronger, Faster*
xx Billy: The Early Years
63 Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
56 Bottle Shock
75 Boy A
55 Bra Boys
xx Breakfast with Scot
61 Brick Lane
64 Brideshead Revisited
61 Bustin' Down the Door
xx Call and Response
49 Children of Huang Shi, The
47 Choke
xx Choose Connor
xx Christmas on Mars: A Fantastical Film Freakout Featuring the Flaming Lips
54 CSNY: Déjà Vu
41 Cthulhu
64 Duchess, The
85 Edge of Heaven, The
66 Elegy
33 Elite Squad
52 Elsa & Fred
80 Encounters at the End of the World
26 Everybody Wants to Be Italian
64 Fall, The
28 Fireproof
86 Flight of the Red Balloon, The
65 Flow: For Love of Water
37 Forever Strong
39 Forgiveness
82 Frozen River
73 Girl Cut in Two, A
62 Girls Rock!
xx Goal II: Living the Dream
73 Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
57 Good Dick
54 Hamlet 2
xx Happy-Go-Lucky
25 Hell Ride
44 Henry Poole is Here
31 Hounddog
53 Humboldt County
72 I Served the King of England
71 I.O.U.S. A
40 Igor
64 In Search of a Midnight Kiss
46 Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer
67 Jellyfish
xx Just Buried
62 Kabluey
63 Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
78 Last Mistress, The
52 Last Stop for Paul
70 Love Songs
xx Lower Learning
63 Man Named Pearl, A
89 Man on Wire
62 Mister Foe
86 Momma's Man
74 Mongol
80 Moving Midway
46 My Mexican Shivah
xx Nights and Weekends
73 Obscene
80 Order of Myths, The
67 Patti Smith: Dream of Life
xx Phoebe in Wonderland
55 Ping Pong Playa
77 Pool, The
72 Priceless
82 Rachel Getting Married
61 Red
55 Religulous
71 Roman de gare
78 Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired
51 Savage Grace
58 Save Me
72 Secret, A
45 Shoot on Sight
57 Sixty Six
55 Sukiyaki Western Django
16 Surfer, Dude
82 Tell No One
56 Then She Found Me
63 Thousand Years of Good Prayers, A
71 To the Limit
57 Towelhead
72 Transsiberian
83 Trouble the Water
83 U2 3D
84 Up the Yangtze
52 Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived
79 Visitor, The
61 Wackness, The
xx Whaledreamers
54 What We Do Is Secret
66 When Did You Last See Your Father?
67 XXY
55 Year of the Fish
39 Young People F**king
75 Young@Heart

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 



Printer-Friendly Version Email This Page Discuss In Our Forums

Perfect Stranger
Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures Entertainment

Perfect Stranger reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 31 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
4.5 out of 10
based on 31 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 20 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for sexual content, nudity, some disturbing violent images and language

Starring Bruce Willis, Halle Berry, Giovanni Ribisi, Gary Dourdan, Clea Lewis, Nicki Aycox, Olja Hrustic, and Patti D'Arbanville

How far would you go to keep a secret? When investigative reporter Rowena Price (Berry) learns that her friend's murder might be connected to powerful ad executive Harrison Hill (Willis), she goes undercover with the help of her associate Miles Hailey (Ribisi). Posing as Katherine, a temp at Hill's agency, and Veronica, a girl Hill flirts with online, Rowena surrounds her prey from all sides, only to discover that she isn't the only one changing identities. The closer we get to learning the truth, the more we understand how far people will go to protect it. (Sony Pictures)


GENRE(S): Drama  |  Suspense/Thriller  
WRITTEN BY: Todd Komarnicki
Jon Bokenkamp (story)
 
DIRECTED BY: James Foley  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: August 21, 2007 
Theatrical: April 13, 2007 
RUNNING TIME: 109 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

75
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
To see Perfect Stranger is to wish for a more sophisticated vehicle for a film actress this good, but actors -- and audiences -- take what they can get. This is better than most.
Read Full Review
67
Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Perfect Stranger is far from Hitchcock, and Berry, although she gets an A for effort, can't do much with the half-baked characterizations.
Read Full Review
63
TV Guide Ken Fox
Todd Komarnicki's screenplay relies heavily on red herrings and a host of suspects (there are more murderers swanning around Hill's sleek offices than there were aboard the Orient Express) to keep audiences distracted from what, in retrospect, is really pretty obvious.
Read Full Review
58
Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
Cliched, mostly routine and never especially satisfying.
Read Full Review
58
Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
Instead of heightening the intrigue in this psychological thriller, the labored twists and out-of-leftfield turns will leave audiences more weary than wary.
Read Full Review
50
Miami Herald Carla Meyer
A rarely suspenseful thriller with a twist ending of the worst kind: It takes too much explanation.
Read Full Review
50
New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
Think you'd be happy watching Berry do little more than look beautiful? Perfect Stranger gives you plenty of opportunity to find out.
Read Full Review
50
Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Perfect Stranger is one of those movies that two years, or two months, from now, you won't recall having seen. Ostensibly a movie about big secrets, it comes up with few that are worth keeping, or telling.
Read Full Review
50
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
It is an acceptable enough thriller, neither the worst you've seen nor the opposite.
Read Full Review
50
Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
It lacks the rutting nuttiness of "Basic Instinct," even as it recycles much of that film's kiss-or-kill premise.
Read Full Review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
The only surprise here is the real star of the show, who turns out to be not Halle Berry, not even Bruce Willis, but a flat computer screen in all its hard-driven glory.
Read Full Review
42
The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson
When the left-field ending finally arrives, it explains a lot, including why she's so off-putting and histrionic, but it never really explains why audiences should bother sitting through such a tangled mess.
Read Full Review
42
Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell
Joins the growing list of blandly made erotic thrillers that contain no eroticism, few thrills and fewer likable characters.
Read Full Review
40
Village Voice Scott Foundas
Perfect Stranger derives some novelty value from its colorblind casting and from being the most ludicrously silly Hollywood f----fest since the Willis-starring "Color of Night" (minus that movie's comic self-awareness). But as a thriller, it's so by-the-numbers that it's hardly worth keeping count.
Read Full Review
38
ReelViews James Berardinelli
A movie so inane that it fails to rise to the level of "good trash."
Read Full Review
38
Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Perfect Stranger is the Egg MacGuffin of whodunits, a cheesy affair that casts so many baited lures that they tangle each other and don't hook you.
Read Full Review
30
Austin Chronicle Steve Davis
The fishy smell that permeates Perfect Stranger comes from all of the red herrings flopping around this absurdly plotted Hollywood thriller.
Read Full Review
30
Washington Post Stephen Hunter
Just another thriller, utterly disposable.
Read Full Review
30
Variety John Anderson
A disorienting cocktail of illogic and hysteria that requires an 11th-hour soliloquy just to explain what's happened.
Read Full Review
30
The New York Times Stephen Holden
The director, as he showed in movies like "After Dark, My Sweet," and "Fear," specializes in conjuring conspiratorial atmospheres in which anxiety and sexual menace hang in the air like a heavy, bitter perfume. Long after you've dismissed the movie's ridiculous, convoluted story, traces of that scent may linger.
Read Full Review
30
The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen
The star wattage quickly dims in this slick-looking but ringingly hollow affair that starts off generically at best before collapsing into a convoluted heap of shrill screen cliches.
Read Full Review
25
New York Post Lou Lumenick
Have you ever seen a movie without a single believable moment? Perfect Stranger, a convoluted and altogether risible thriller with Halle Berry and Bruce Willis, manages this difficult feat.
Read Full Review
25
USA Today Claudia Puig
Superficial and lurid, Perfect Stranger is the cinematic equivalent of spam and should, like those trashy messages, be avoided.
Read Full Review
25
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
A crappy thriller gussied up with a chrome-plated veneer.
Read Full Review
25
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
A dull, dumb and unforgivably dated thriller, free of thrills and any kind of perfection.
Read Full Review
25
Boston Globe Ty Burr
After "Gothika " and "Catwoman ," a viewer has to wonder: Why does this woman keep making thrillers if she can't bring herself to be thrilled?
Read Full Review
20
Time Richard Schickel
The movie's central problem: a lack of alternative suspects...How the screenwriter, Todd Komarnicki, and the director, James Foley, resolve this problem is a genre travesty and an affront to their star.
Read Full Review
20
Empire Dan Jolin
A twist-burdened techno-thriller that would be by-the-numbers if it could count.
Read Full Review
20
Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
This stupidly contrived thriller is all the more disappointing if you admire previous work by Berry and director James Foley (After Dark, My Sweet).
Read Full Review
10
Film Threat Michael Ferraro
Nothing but a perfect waste of a Friday night. Or a Tuesday night. Or any night of the week for that matter.
Read Full Review
0
Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Life is full of choices, and Halle Berry has made another bad one with Perfect Stranger, a perfectly off-putting thriller.

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 4.5 (out of 10) based on 20 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Keith J gave it a3:
People who think this is a good movie need to see more movies. Rent or buy Strangers On A Train. It's $9.99 at my local supermarket. You have no idea what you are missing. Watching this movie makes me dumber. The only reason I give it a 3 is Halle Berry. I'd give a 3 if the movie involved nothing but Halle Barry standing in front of a blank background. The plot and writing are pitiful.

Marques H gave it an8:
I was against seeing this movie after reading all the reviews. I'm sorry, the critics are wrong. The plot was excellent, I was on th edge my seat. Halle Berry, Bruce Willis and Giovanni were excellent in this film. Go rent this movie, you will not be disappointed.

[Anonymous] gave it a7:
Perfect Stranger is better than about 2/3 of current Hollywood movies. The plot is fairly complex, the characters are interesting and sufficiently believable, mood is sustained, and the film is fun to watch and even discuss afterward. With so much product out there which insults the viewer, why have critics savaged Perfect Stranger?

Tyler D. gave it a5:
Boring, unoriginal, and ultimately stupid. The less-than-clever twist near the end of the movie didn't help very much, either.

AJ K. gave it an8:
This movie is a good horror movie with a very good story line.

Lisa E. gave it a3:
This is one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time. It had such a weak storyline which didn't really seem to go anywhere. A total waste of time!

Cathy L. gave it a0:
This was slow, dumb and weak. Charactures were unlikable. Holes everywhere. Don't waste your time or money on this film.

Read more user comments...

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page
Home | FILM | DVD/VIDEO | MUSIC | GAMES | TV | Forums | About Metacritic metacritic.com

Popular on CBS sites: Fantasy Football | Miley Cyrus | MLB | iPhone 3G | GPS | Recipes | Shwayze | NFL

About CNET Networks | Jobs | Advertise

© 2008 CNET Networks, Inc., a CBS Company. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use