1st watched 3/1/2002 - 5 out of 10(Dir-Sidney Lumet): ONE SPOILER(Sorry!)... Good attempt at Witness-type thriller by Sidney Lumet and star Melanie Griffith, but the true goal & direction of the film seems to change from moment to moment. As a thriller it could have been good, as a drama it also could have been good, as a mystery it could have been good, and even as an offbeat romance it could have had promise. But the problem is that we get this all mixed into one story. There are also a couple of scenes that just get cutoff. For mistakes like this to leak thru are very unusual indeed for movie-people of this caliber. Griffith's performance is really not the problem, but rather the uneven script. Griffith's character goes undercover in a Orthodox Jewish community but her change isn't dramatic enough to even seem undercover. Yes, her clothing and her hair change but that's about it. Slowly she gets pulled into the friendliness of this group and falls for one of it's men. But the other story revolves around a murder that occurred within the community and Griffith's attempt to solve it. The Whodunit gets mixed up with whether she'll do it with her new found Jewish hunk. They don't... but she get's the killer(oops, i guess that was kind of a SPOILER...). Anyway, maybe this would have done much better if more time was taken to making it a good movie rather than an average one.
Review of A Stranger Among Us
