Barry Wetcher Halle Berry, right, plays an investigative reporter for a New York newspaper who misrepresents herself to an ad executive, Bruce Willis, right, in "Perfect Stranger."

You don't have to work at a newspaper to know this is not how things are done. You don't even have to read a newspaper to know this is not how things are done.

		'Perfect Stranger' Starring: Halle Berry, Bruce Willis, Giovanni Ribisi. Director: James Foley. Rating: R for sexual content, nudity, some disturbing violent images and language. Web site: www.sonypictures.com/movies/perfectstranger Related article Reporter roles don't always get the story right

In "Perfect Stranger," Halle Berry plays an investigative reporter for a New York newspaper who misrepresents herself to a U.S. senator, secretly records and transmits his voice and apparently writes under a pseudonym, of a man.

No question, the senator is sleazy and deserving of exposure, but "Perfect Stranger" makes a mockery of how most news organizations operate, even the New York tabloids with shrieking "Gotcha!" headlines.

In the name of entertainment, however, they join the police departments, law firms and hospitals on TV or film who are nothing like their real-life counterparts. Although of course we all look and dress like Berry, particularly those of us who write about movies.

In "Perfect Stranger," Berry's character, reporter Rowena Price, quits in a fit of drunken anger after her editor squashes her story about the senator. Just another case of powerful men protecting other powerful men, she bitterly suggests.

On her way home, she bumps into a childhood friend named Grace, who mentions a torrid affair with an ad executive named Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis). After Grace turns up dead, Rowena decides to go undercover at Hill's ad agency and to lure the womanizer into a trap with chat-room flirtation, with the help of a former colleague and computer expert named Miles (Giovanni Ribisi).

"Perfect Stranger" is one of those movies that has more twists and turns than a year's worth of daytime soaps. And when the absurd truth is finally rolled out, like a carpet bumping down an endless staircase, it takes a long monologue to explain it all, rather than a single, hair-raising realization or jolt. And then it piles one surprise upon another, like a poorly constructed layer cake that threatens to topple over.

"Perfect Stranger" exists in some sort of bubble where logic doesn't apply, although product placement does. No need to position cans of soft drinks, labels to the camera, when you can plug Victoria's Secret or other companies serviced by the ad agency. It's like watching a very special "Apprentice."

That's nothing compared to the peeved boss who pummels an employee in front of lots of witnesses or the arrival of a stranger in an office who is immediately entrusted with valuable property or, especially, what is offered as motivation for murder.

Berry, working her beauty, sexuality and smarts, makes the most of a role even more absurd than her parts in "Catwoman" or "Gothika." Ribisi is at his squirrely best -- or, more accurately, worst -- while Willis wears a hairpiece, smirk and general air of boredom as his character shares his business philosophy: "It's kill or become irrelevant."

"Perfect Stranger," directed by James Foley and written by novelist Todd Komarnicki, kills plenty and seems irrelevant.