It’s been a long time since I saw a film that I enjoyed for its pure story so much.
Perfect Strangers directed by James Folly and more importantly written by Jon Bokenkamp is purely about the story and not so much about the actors or the technicality of the film.
Well with actors like Halle Berry and Bruce Willis and not to forget Giovanni Ribisi, you but expect nothing but the best.
The film is an edge of the seat thriller in the sense that it keeps you guessing to who the murderer is.
Halle plays a reporter whose friend is murdered by who she believes is the head honcho of an advertising agency.
While she is following that trail, just before the interval you would be led to believe that her accomplice and friend Miles might be the guy who could have killed her friend.
That notion however is shattered just as the film breaks into the interval point, thus making the second half as good as the first one.
Halle Berry does full justice to her character and is a delight to watch. Bruce Willis on the other hand is an actor who is not used to his full potential in the film, probably because his character is the one which is shrouded with mystery.
He comes into the film after a good half an hour and the film isn’t really centered around his character, per say.
Miles played by Giovanni on the other hand has a lot of shades to his character and gives a wonderful portrayl of the possessive, jealous, friend.
Two things about this film are most interesting - the fact that we all have secrets and they are safe till they are not uncovered. The film travels into the darkest closets of most of the characters to reveal their hidden truths and secondly the use of computers to hack literally into someone’s life. We don’t use technology but in today’s time and age it is actually technology that is working against us. It is something to really think about.
The characterisations in the film have a lot of layers to it. While Halle Berry’s character is an honest and gutsy journalist she writes under the name of a guy. She is best friends with Miles who doesn’t know her deepest secret and she doesn’t know his either.
Bruce Willis, an ad agency guy, probably reflects the lifestyle of a typical exec in the way he behaves despite having had trouble with his wife for the same reason of having extra marital affairs.
Miles is a complex character too and even the cameo character of the office junior who fills in Halle with all the office gossip has her own traits.
Some interesting trivia that I came across about the film was that this is the first film that is shot in New York at ground zero after the 9/11 and also most interesting there were three separate endings of the film that were shot. Each with of course three different killers.
This one for now obviously works the best since it leaves you completely dumbstruck and according to me if you can walk out of a film thinking about it and talking about it, it is a good film.
So people go for it, it is definitely worth a dekko.