Great Director Sidney Lumet has brought many great police dramas to life over the years. Such as the marvelous 'Serpico' With Al Pacino. 'Prince of the City' 'Q & A' among many others. But even he can't overcome the poor performance of his sadly misplaced leading lady in the already flawed 'A Stranger Among Us'. The problems begin with the film's prosaic title. Already 'A Stranger Among Us' seems trite and contrived. Perhaps sticking with the UK moniker 'Close to Eden' wouldn't have sounded as much like the title of a Lifetime movie. Griffith strikes out as a police woman who goes undercover in New York's Hissidic Jewish community to solve the disappearance of a young jewelry shop keeper whom she ultimately discovers murdered..From one of the opening scenes when Griffith asserts her character as a tough talking, trigger happy cowboy, or girl in this instance, we know the plot is headed for ridicule. Griffith never seems to leave terrible enough alone as she comes up with a new, in your face, slogan for almost every new scene and situation. Then things really take a turn for the absurd when one of the young potential Rabbis turns out to be disguised hunk Eric Thal. And grows even more ludicrous when Griffith, with the help of one the young Hissidic girls ( Mia Sara ) gets a total Jewish makeover to go undercover as one of their own. Her dyed blonde locks now toned down to a still teased, yet slightly more modest black. As she sets out to solve the crime, the relationship between her and Thal's persona Ariel seems as out of place as the police women herself. For one thing, Griffath, who looks like she's lived the hard party life she has, looks way too old for Thal, as she does for all her leading men. And where did she get and why does she employ that God forsaken Marilyn Monroe accent? Eventually the forbidden romance comes to a head, as we suffer through formulated scenes where Thal and Griffith lament the differences between their worlds. And you sense that Griffith just needs a chance to wrap her legs around the religious student for him to flush the whole faith down the toilet. In Griffith's defense it is a difficult premise to make work and I can't think of one actress who could have pulled it off convincingly. Thal tries to play it straight as the fledgling rabbi but has only his costume to work with.The whole thing plays out like kind of a reverse version of the Harrison Ford film 'Witness' Only the plot is much less imaginative and the romance can not find any foothold here. In the end Lumet didn't have no where near as much to work with as he did in most of his other films. And any hope of anyone taking any of this nonsense seriously wast lost on the incompetence of Griffith.. No doubt Lumet was forced to cast her based on the success of box office hits like 'Working Girl'. The poor old man must have been tearing his hair out. anyway, the shock ending isn't much of a shock, and you've probably already turned the channel by then. This one is definitely not kosher. Miss it. 4 out of a possible 10 T.H.
Review of A Stranger Among Us
