Advanced Search >
Help Me Search

Movies

Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores

Wide Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Limited Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

58 (Untitled)
96 35 Shots of Rum
56 Adam
72 Adela
39 Adventures of Power
78 Afghan Star
61 After the Storm
66 Afterschool
xx All the Best
58 American Casino
72 Amreeka
48 Antichrist
73 Araya
62 Art & Copy
55 As Seen Through These Eyes
76 Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86 Beaches of Agnes, The
13 Beautiful Life, A
70 Beeswax
35 Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
71 Big Fan
66 Black Dynamite
51 Blind Date
xx Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly
76 Bliss
35 Blue Tooth Virgin, The
26 Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
57 Boys Are Back, The
45 Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81 Bright Star
70 Bronson
45 Burning Plain, The
xx Carriers
55 Casi Divas
57 Chelsea on the Rocks
62 Cloud 9
65 Coco Before Chanel
69 Cold Souls
59 Collapse
44 Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted Mutha
82 Cove, The
75 Crude
82 Damned United, The
67 Departures
xx Dil Bole Hadippa
71 Disgrace
xx Do Knot Disturb
70 Earth Days
24 Eating Out 3: All You Can Eat
85 Education, An
55 Endgame
xx Eulogy for a Vampire
xx Everyone Else
xx Fatal Promises
56 Fifty Dead Men Walking
62 Five Minutes of Heaven
74 Flame & Citron
49 Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80 Food, Inc.
28 Free Style
xx From Mexico with Love
50 Fuel
25 Gentlemen Broncos
50 Give Me Your Hand
58 Gogol Bordello Non-Stop
72 Good Hair
89 Goodbye Solo
52 Grace
66 Harmony and Me
81 Headless Woman, The
xx Heretics, The
63 Horse Boy, The
73 House of the Devil, The
xx How to Seduce Difficult Women
74 Humpday
94 Hurt Locker, The
29 I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
16 If One Thing Matters: A Film About Wolfgang Tillmans
75 In Search of Beethoven
83 In the Loop
61 Intimate Enemies
42 Irene in Time
70 It Might Get Loud
46 Killing Kasztner
19 Labor Day
xx Laila's Birthday
41 Little Ashes
41 Little Traitor, The
66 Liverpool
34 Looking for Palladin
80 Lorna's Silence
83 Maid, The
xx Ministers, The
59 More Than a Game
67 Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, The
34 Motherhood
62 My One and Only
xx Mystery Team
48 New York, I Love You
73 Night and Day
66 No Impact Man
47 Ong Bak 2: The Beginning
34 Other Man, The
xx Painter Sam Francis, The
54 Paper Heart
xx Paradise
68 Paranormal Activity
68 Paris
44 Peter and Vandy
35 Play the Game
77 Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
xx Pretty Ugly People
65 Providence Effect, The
76 Rembrandt's J'accuse
69 September Issue, The
79 Serious Man, A
40 Shrink
61 Skin
77 Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake, A
xx Skiptracers
46 Splinterheads
39 St. Trinian's
89 Still Walking
50 Stoning of Soraya M., The
55 Storm
65 Tetro
70 That Evening Sun
72 Thirst
xx Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D (re-release)
61 Trucker
xx Turning Green
83 U2 3D
66 Unmade Beds
66 Unmistaken Child
70 Visual Acoustics
55 Walt & El Grupo
67 Way We Get By, The
69 We Live in Public
64 Wedding Song, The
64 Where is Where?
xx White on Rice
74 Woman in Berlin, A
69 World's Greatest Dad
70 Yes Men Fix the World
69 Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
xx You, the Living

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Perfect Stranger

EMAILPRINTColumbia Pictures / Sony Pictures Entertainment

Perfect Stranger reviews
31
4.4 User Score:

Generally unfavorable reviews

Based on 31 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 21 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >

Movie Info

Genre(s): Drama  |  Suspense/Thriller

Written by: Todd Komarnicki
Jon Bokenkamp (story)

Directed by: James Foley

Release Date:
Theatrical: April 13, 2007
DVD: August 21, 2007

Running Time: 109 minutes, Color

Origin: USA

Summary

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)

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

The average user rating for this movie is 4.4 (out of 10) based on 21 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 >

Popular on CBS sites: SEC Football | NFL | Video Game Cheats | iPhone | Video Game Reviews | Notebooks | Antivirus Software

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use