It's late, late at night. Lit only by the soft glow of a computer monitor, RocketGirl signs online. Five minutes later, ADEX also enters into the chat-sphere. ADEX: R U tired? RocketGirl: Depends, what did you have in mind? As he is merely talking to a faceless stranger, ADEX wastes no time and moves in for the kill. ADEX: What R U wearing? While the above dramatization sounds like the introduction to a lovely cyber experience in the AOL 40-and-over room, it's actually a major plot point in director James Foley's "Perfect Stranger," where RocketGirl is a scantily clad Halle Berry and each ADEX instant message features the voice of a dirty-talking Bruce Willis. Relying on a plot of cheap computer tricks that could easily be hacked by any sixth grader growing up in the 1990s, Foley's so-called technological thriller attempts to weave a suspenseful web, chock-full of moral morsels, but succeeds only in raising the all-important question: Does Halle Berry pick and choose her roles these days, or does she simply take any film offered to her? The perfectly horrendous film kicks off with a supermarket tabloid-meets-"All the President's Men" beginning as probing journalist Rowena finds herself on the verge of cracking a sex scandal in Congress. The ace reporter gets the sources and proper evidence she needs, but just when the juicy dish of gossip is about to hit the presses, the plug is pulled due to a financial conflict of interest. Enter moral instruction No. 1: The media are merely vessels of the monetary powers that be. In an attempt to up the movie's feminist ante and let the audience know they are dealing with a reporter dedicated to the principal pillars of journalism, Rowena gives an inebriated, yet emotional soliloquy about the media machine's practice of "powerful men protecting men." To send a message, she abruptly quits, but her journalistic responsibility only begins when she walks out the door. When Rowena's childhood friend Grace (Nicki Aycox, "Jeepers Creepers II") winds up the victim of a gruesome murder, she must put her professional skills to the test and go to work building a case against advertising extraordinaire and online-chat swinger Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis, "Sin City"). With the help of her newsie-hacker sidekick Miles (Giovanni Ribisi, "The Big White"), Rowena is able to find a temp job at Hill's H2A ad agency. Using her reporter wits, and even more so her hourglass figure, she establishes a relationship with her womanizing employer. What follows is a series of steamy, confusing flashbacks and the addition of more unnecessary subplots than a Dan Brown novel, as the pieces of Grace's brutal death are revealed through Rowena and Miles' "tech-savvy" detective work. The should-be dynamic duo of Berry and Ribisi instead proves rather flat and their characters contradictory. Berry's character initially berates her former editors for allowing powerful men to control the truth and paints herself as the picture of feminism early on, yet it is soon revealed that she writes under a male pen name, uses her body as an investigative mechanism and maintains sexual relationships with cheating ex-boyfriends. Ribisi plays his usual typecast role, the sidekick who initially appears harmless, but behind the pale, sunken eyes, bears his own arsenal of secrets. While he is supposed to be something of a computer whiz, his idea of high tech is flash drives and spyware. Willis, on the other hand, delivers an average performance as ad exec Harrison Hill, striking an adequate balance of one part cutthroat businessman and one part skeezy adulterer. However, his character's villain appeal all but fades away by the film's midpoint, when viewers' fear for him is replaced by their growing disdain for his digital voice speaking to Halle Berry via IM window. The film relies heavily on such Internet exchanges, perhaps as an excuse to show repeated extreme close-ups of screenshot-inviting Halle Berry's mouth transitions. An additional side note: Honestly, what millionaire mastermind passes his late-night hours trolling the Net looking for chicks? The film's pitfalls don't end with the acting and redundant footage but are further compounded by the inclusion of strange flashbacks from Rowena's childhood that all reference her abusive father storming up the stairs and a running shower in the bathroom. Gradually, more of this subplot is expounded upon, sometimes including Willis' villain, Harrison Hill, and other interesting guests, but the ideas don't quite match up until it's too late. The aim of a thriller is to leave the audience gripped with suspense, waiting on edge with their hearts racing, their arms lined with goose bumps. "Perfect Stranger" loses sight of this and winds up lost in the jumbled mess of junior-high cyberspace. Grade: 2 out of 5