SOME mole has let it be known that James Foley filmed three separate endings - a different killer in each - for this atrocious cinematic epitaph to the prematurely withered, maggoty career of poor Halle Berry.
Good grief. What on earth can he have thrown away? Is there footage in the vaults of Ms Berry being abducted by giant lizards wearing toupees? Is there a rejected denouement in which she tears off her latex Halle mask to reveal SpongeBob SquarePants's grinning visage? Is there a version featuring Rob Schneider?
Perfect Stranger, every second of which sparkles with unintentional hilarity, appears to have been conceived as a tale of forbidden romance between Berry's investigative journalist and a powerful advertising executive played, with no attempt to feign consciousness, by Bruce Willis. The retching noise that spread about test screenings did its job and the film-makers have re-ordered the film so that the reporter now only shares a few drinks with the man she believes to be a murderer.
Elsewhere. a dozen other equally dim plots flail grimly about like recently harpooned squid. The perennially irritating Giovanni Ribisi fumes as Halle's desperate admirer. There is some supposedly voguish - actually shopworn - stuff about the dangers of internet chat rooms. An old buddy of the protagonist's gets done in.
And so forth.
Sadly, none of this peripheral activity can distract from the gauntlet of humiliation through which Halle Berry, a decent actress with formidable presence, finds herself running. Doesn't she realise? Forced to pose as an office tea lady while dressed for the Ascot scene in My Fair Lady, Berry wears the beatific gaze of a woman blissfully unaware that her car is trundling rapidly downhill towards an alligator-infested ravine. We should, perhaps, just look away and leave her to her misfortune.
