? Tabloid reporter Halle Berry gets the goods on a lying senator by lying and telling him she represents a conservative group, then finds her story quashed by the powers that be. Undeterred by the setback, or journalistic ethics, she goes undercover to find out what a womanizing adman (Bruce Willis) might know about the death of a former lover.
+ The appeal here is quick pacing with a twist ending. Willis and Berry are engaging without causing you to actually care about their characters. Giovanni Ribisi is creepy but oddly compelling in the otherwise clichéd role of the computer-genius helper, who in this case palpably lusts after his partner in investigation.
- It’s easy to have a surprise ending when you don’t need to follow the contours of reality. It’s like if someone made a movie about Donald Trump where you eventually learned that he secretly spent his free time doing charity work for the poor, but hadn’t wanted to toot his own horn. Or one where Britney Spears was secretly a rocket scientist. Okay, maybe it’s not that unrealistic. There are little hints about how everything fits together, but they mostly come from mini-flashbacks rather than the behavior of the characters. This movie has some entertainment value, but it’s forgettable fluff, right down to the title, that made me wonder if Berry, having won an Oscar five years ago, is trying to assure herself of never getting nominated for another.
= **1/2 Does the admittedly surprising ending deserve praise when it seems so gimmicky? Probably, since it’s more than most Hollywood “thrillers” give us these days. But some movies, like Fracture, do that and more.
IMDB link
reviewed 4/27/07
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