Rowena Price (Halle Berry) is an investigative reporter who exposes a senator playing around with his young male interns. With her creepy investigative love-slave, Miles Hailey (Giovanni Ribisi), Rowena thinks she will get her Pulitzer but, as it turns out, her scandalous story never sees the light of day as a cadre of political bigwigs squish it like a bug. Frustrated, Rowena quits. She has a childhood friend Grace (Nicki Aycox) who throws her a file and tells her to go after mega-millionaire advertising executive Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis). She's been having an affair with him but has recently been dumped like so much jetsam, and thus sends Rowena smiffing around hoping to expose his adulterous affairs. Rowena and Grace's long friendship has obviously seen its highs and lows because there is a scene where Grace follows Rowena and approaches her on a subway platform which elicits a look of disgust from Rowena that paints more than a thousand words.

Rowena is a reluctant conspirator – Grace is a lowlife - but curiosity gets the best of Catwoman and she begins to look into Hill's background. She is blindsided when Grace is found brutally murdered and dumped in a river. She was pregnant and now Rowena suspects Hill might be responsible. He's got a jealous wife who has had enough of his affairs.

With the help of Miles (Giovanni Ribisi - this character is vital to all thriller movies but I've never met one myself), Rowena takes a job as a temp in Hill's ad agency. His big clients are Victoria's Secret and Reebok. Both brands have commercials in Perfect Stranger. What will Spider Man 3 promote? Will there be a classy watch on Indiana Jones's wrist that is an important part of the Indy 4 plot?

Hill is such a womanizer that he notices the new temp immediately. He also meets women on chat rooms because he has nothing to do and his wife has him on a short leash. Sure, it's a tight collar, but Rowena – now undercover as Katherine Pogue – is gorgeous.

According to IMDB.com's trivia for Perfect Stranger, "The filmmakers filmed three different endings to the film, each with a different character as the killer."

Well, at least they didn't feel obliged to go with the killer in the original screenplay. Was the killer chosen by committee or preview audiences?

When you can't figure out how to sneak into someone's estate, get their chat room password or credit card purchases, all you have to do is have a Miles character around. Miles even knows my zboneman password and has been posting reviews under my name!

Because of Berry's aristocratic beauty it's tough to accept she doesn't know that Miles is in lust with her. I think it's cheating if a filmmaker must advance the narrative by having people typing or reading. And it's just bad form when a character makes a long political or environmental speech, or recites C.S. Lewis.

Rowena, Hill and Miles all spend a lot of time online talking sexy. Hill will not give up his identity, but Rowena, thanks to Miles, is pretending to be Katherine and a woman Hill is flirting with online. Miles, who knows Rowena's and Hill's passwords, is also online pretending to be Katherine, Rowena, and Hill.

As Hill's other chat mate Veronica, he should have propositioned Katherine.

To the "who killed Grace" sweepstakes, the screenwriter teases us with the jealous wife, the boyfriend of Grace, and even Hill's lesbian aide (she got my vote).

I enjoyed Berry's seamless move in or out of her character's identities. Ribisi just has that kind of face that telegraphs "sleep around me with one eye open." He could be the next Robert Downey Jr. (still hailed for playing Charlie Chaplin twenty years ago.) And Willis? This is his "I'm still hot" Michael Douglas movie. Yet, he is so gnarly in his bespoke suits that I was hoping Rowena would have to register on a B&D chat room to flirt with him.

And, since "Perfect Stranger" opens on the heels of "The Reaping," I will say that I loved the ending. This is how you end a thriller. Oh yeah, and you hire James Foley to direct.

(We at zboneman.com are excited to welcome the prolific and multi-talented writer Victoria Alexander to our staff. Critic for http://www.filmsinreview.com/ and pundit and humorist responsible for the candid and fearlessly funny "The Devil's Hammer," her column appears every Monday on http://fromthebalcony.com. Start off your week with a good hard laugh. It's a thrill to have her on board. Victoria Alexander answers every email and can be contacted directly at .)