Every so often a thriller filled with twists and turns just simply veers off the road and plunges into the abyss. I suspect most folks will find "Perfect Stranger" to be one of those too carefully crafted suspense yarns that veers once or twice too often, too clever for its own good.

Halle Berry plays Rowena (Rowena?), an ace reporter hot on the trail of the dirtiest of scandals. Miles (Giovanni Ribisi) is her guy Friday, a quirky computer geek who can sneak into systems lickety-split, usually just in time to save Rowena's bottom from imminent danger.

I only mention Rowena's bottom here because director James Foley makes sure we view plenty of Berry's body parts, a little reminiscent of J.Lo's screen-filling presence in "Gigli." Not that I'm complaining about Ms. Berry's body parts, mind you- just pointing it out. That's my job.

A strange, seemingly sinister friend steps out of Berry's past to tell her that New York power player Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis) might be a man well worth investigating. The rather veiled message seems to indicate that Rowena (Rowena?) and her friend share a lessthanidyllic past- and for a while, the setup seems plausible, if a little rushed.

On cue, a brutal and coincidental murder pushes the intrepid Rowena into action.

Harrison is a womanizer, a powerful man building a powerful ad agency with his rich wife's money. Rowena hires on as a temp at the agency. She quickly catches Harrison's eye, and the two of them begin to flirt. Thankfully, Rowena looks a lot like Halle Berry, so the boss's zoning in on the new temp on day one isn't all that unbelievable.

Unfortunately, most of the rest of the flick is. Even Bruce Willis seems sadly underutilized here, his villainous persona vapid and uninspired. "Perfect Stranger" is Berry's star vehicle, after all; one senses the camera reluctant to stray from her presence. A pity, as I sense Willis ripe to play the perfect bad guy, should a decent script allow him sufficient elbow room.

Those of us out for a mindless evening watching pretty people flirt and feign reaction to imagined danger might moderately enjoy "Perfect Stranger." But for those of us who pay attention to plot, there's just not enough substance to grab hold of.

And when the film's many secrets begin to flutter down around us like flakes in a Wisconsin blizzard, my advice is to hunker down and muddle through, knowing that the sight of Ms. Berry will keep us warm inside.

Addendum. An unconfirmed but seemingly likely rumor: "Perfect Stranger" was released with three different endings and three different killers, meaning that even the filmmakers were so befuddled by the muddled plot that they didn't know (or couldn't care less) who the killer is. After-hours marketing or breathless Hollywood secret? Either way, it does little to help the story, only serves to further cheat the audience.