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SYNOPSIS:
When her friend's affair with married ad exec Harrison Hill
ends in the woman's murder, investigative reporter Rowena
Price vows to bring the killer to justice. Suspecting Hill
of the crime, she goes undercover by posing as two highly
alluring women: Katherine, a sexy temp who works within the
agency and Veronica, a seductive temptress he chats up online.
Engaging in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse, both Rowena
and Hill begin to realize things may not be what they seem.
For some people will go to great lengths to protect their
secrets even if it means risking everything.
MOVIE
REVIEW
All’s
not fair in the world of Hollywood. There are just some movies
that everyone loves to hate. The year of 2007 is coming to
an end, and this movie is definitely going down as one of
those movies which any self respected reviewer must hate.
And here I am, joining the bandwagon in panning this movie.
James
Foley (The Corrupter) directs Halle Berry (Monster’s
Ball, X-Men) and Bruce Willis (Lucky Number Slevin, Fast Food
Nation) in this self-proclaimed erotic thriller which sees
Berry’s investigative journalist trying to uncover the
mystery of her friend’s gruesome murder. Willis’s
cocky businessman is the prime suspect because he is known
to be a womanizer and a corporate bad guy. Cue flirting from
both parties: offline and online. You see, not only does Berry’s
character situates herself at Willis’s firm as a temp,
she chats him up using another identity online.
The
premise does seem titillating, and the thought of sexy Berry
(yes, the same one who emerged from the seas in Die Another
Day) luring stupid men like Willis into confessing a crime
does have potential to steam up any hot-blooded male viewer’s
television screen. But the mismatched pairing of the two leads
simply makes watching them flirt irritating. Willis does not
seem very convinced of the role he is playing, although his
constant smirk does make him a good slimy villain. And don’t
think that you’d be seeing much action in this M18 flick,
because even my low standards for anything sensational weren’t
met.
Thanks
to Givoanni Ribisi (the Dead Girl) then, because his computer
hacker role does make things a bit more interesting throughout
the 109-minute movie. His talkative and cheeky character will
perk up your tired senses every now and then.
What
ultimately kills this thriller is its attempt to be smart
by having a twist during its last 15 minutes. This unnecessary
move will only annoy viewers who have patiently sat through
the past hour or so, hoping that the filmmakers would not
pull a fast one on them. And when the movie finally reveals
to you who the real killer is (oh, the suspense!), you’d
probably be unimpressed by its redundancy. And the last shot
of the movie finally does it for me. What did the filmmakers
think this project was? A secondary school essay?
Ultimately,
it is Berry we sympathize with. After all, she was an Oscar
Best Actress, what has she done to her career? At least Catwoman
made our imagination go wild with its slinky leather outfit.
SPECIAL FEATURES :
This Code 3 DVD contains a 12-minute featurette “Virtual
Lives: The Making of Perfect Stranger” where
Berry tries to convince herself that this role is special,
while Ribisi comes across as really convincingly as a lewd
stalker. There are also “Previews” for other movies
like Reign Over Me, Surf’s Up and Spider-man 3.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
There
is nothing to complain about for the disc’s visual transfer,
and there are English, Spanish, Portuguese and Thai Dolby
Digital 5.1 audio tracks to choose from.
MOVIE
RATING:
DVD
RATING :
Review
by John Li
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