"Perfect Stranger" could have been a perfect thriller had the loose ends been taken care of and the story had been better executed. Using the Internet and the ugly side of human nature as the backdrop and thus weaving the elements of media-spying, hacking, obsessive stalking, blackmail and murder into the story, the scriptwriter though has written a nice intriguing plot wherein every character is a devious go-getter and has got some dark secrets to hide. But there were too many loopholes in the story. The director James Foley surely surprises the viewers when a very dark secret is revealed about the lead character, right at the end of the movie. But still it fails to strike the chords.
Halle Berry plays the lead character in the movie and is Rowena Price, an investigative journalist working for The New York Courier. Using a male pseudonym, she keeps on investigating the backgrounds of the high and mighty and making sensational exposes of their dark secrets. Thus she always remains in pursuit of dirt and dark secrets of the corporate honchos. The movie opens with her visit to the office of a married politician who was standing in the next election for mayorship. But things become awkward for him when Rowena confronts him with photo evidences of his sexual relationships with some of his male interns. Scared of getting his image tarnished, the politician tries to buy her silence but she refuses. Instead taking the help of his colleague Miles Haley, she records his voice while he was offering her money and was about to publish the news in her next article. That's when the politician pulls the strings with Rowena's superiors, using his sources and succeeds in burying the sensational revelation that was about to come. This angers Rowena and she quits her job.
But an accidental meeting with her childhood friend, Grace, in the subway gives her the next assignment, when she hands over to Rowena a file that contained all chat records of their intimate conversations that Garce had with a certain Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis). He was the owner of a famous advertising company but was also a womaniser, inspite of being married. According to Grace, she had an affair with Hill for a few weeks but then he abruptly ended the affair and suddenly stopped responding to her calls or messages. Grace felt cheated and being used, and so she started to blackmail him and threatened hime that she would go and tell his wife all about their affair. Grace wanted Rowena to follow the lead and publish an article about their affair. But within days of their meeting, Grace is found dead. She had been poisoned and her body is recovered from a lake. Rowena suspects that it is Harrison Hill who had killed her childhood friend Grace.
So taking the help of Miles, her colleague, who also happens to be an expert hacker, she takes two identities, that of Katherine Pogue and takes up a temporary job at Harrison’s ad agency and also as Veronica, who tempts Harrison into an online sexual affair in the chat room. Even as Katherine, she at once manages to catch Harrison's attention and thus starts a dangerous game of flirtation. Though the cover of Rowena gets blown away when Harrison comes across a message on her phone, but she still gets him arrested on the charges of murder of his friend Grace. However from a viewer's point of view, the evidences that Rowena collects against Harrison were hardly convincing enough. The movie ends when another secret of Rowena is revealed by her friend Miles and so to silence him forever, she murders him as well. I felt the characters , especially that of Mr. Bruce Willis, could have been written better.
