The Business of Strangers (2001)
Review by HTQ4
Film:
DVD:

Features:

• Original Theatrical Trailer
  

My Advice: Forget it was ever made

Julie Styron (Channing) lives the corporate life. Her only family is her personal secretary. She's on a business trip giving a presentation, but her assistant, Paula Murphy (Stiles) shows up late with the presentation material. When Murphy's flight gets cancelled, they wind up at the same hotel. Over drinks, they start talking and Julie finds out her "job placement specialist," Nick (Weller) raped one of Paula's friends back in college. It just so happens that Nick is also staying at the same hotel--conveniently enough--so they decide to take a little revenge.

This movie is slow to get started, slow to get to the point, and slow to just end. There were about forty-five individual pauses in the story that you could drive Mack trucks through. There are no stakes for either one of these ladies...even when it feels like it's supposed to be "dangerous." Julia Stiles didn't have the acting chops to tackle a script with this many problems. She simply couldn't make her dialogue feel natural at all, and I did not for one instant feel that she had the ability to manipulate people the way she supposedly played mind games with Channing. Channing, on the other hand, could have acted circles around Stiles but for some unknown reason, didn't. She seemed to be aching to be set free to make the film into something worth watching. It's a shame she wasn't.

Therefore, it is only fitting that the only special feature on the the DVD is the theatrical trailer for the movie. There's no commentary from the director to provide insight, not even the standard-issue making-of featurette for Channing and Stiles to explain themselves. With nothing really to recommend itself, I wouldn't even bother renting this one.