Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.0

A Stranger Among Us Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman March 5, 2018

Director Sidney Lumet (Network, Dog Day Afternoon) ranks as one of the most prominent and prolific filmmakers of his time, widely praised for both the number and quality of films in his canon. A Stranger Among Us ranks as one of the rare flops, a film that stumbles under the burden of a misfire of a lead performance and an internal identity crisis. The film offers a rich, but never compelling, look inside New York's Hasidic Jewish community under the pretext of theft and murder. The film flashes potential, though certainly not from its lead, its flimsy narrative structure, its sluggish pacing, and a host of other problems that keep the film in a middling purgatory where resides an ever-increasing number of movies that are too good to be considered bad and too bad to be considered good.

New York Detective Emily Eden (Melanie Griffith) is forced to use her gun in the line of duty when her partner (Jamey Sheridan) is stabbed and nearly killed during a bust. Her gun is taken away but she's ultimately cleared of any misconduct. She returns to work and is assigned a seemingly inconsequential missing person's and theft case that takes her inside New York's Hasidic Jewish community. She quickly locates the missing man, who is deceased, but cannot locate the more than $700,000 in missing diamonds. She suspects an inside job but also has reason to believe that two swindling brothers (James Gandolfini, Chris Latta) may also be involved. She forges a new identity within the community to discover the killer's identity. As she finds herself more immersed in the Hasidic culture, she grows ever more attracted to a a young man named Ariel (Eric Thal) who lives by a strict Hasidic code and must fend off Emily's increasingly forthright sexual advances.

Though the film crafts a largely interesting look into Hasidic Jewish culture, it fumbles both of its primary story components -- a murder mystery and a quasi-romance -- and all but erases any good graces the script and Lumet otherwise squeak out of it. Much of the movie is centered on the culture clash spurred on by Emily’s endless sexual advances: Emily’s unwillingness to accept Ariel’s adherence to principles and Ariel’s unwillingness to loosen his morals and succumb to her physical pressures. The two finally engage in a deeper philosophical discussion about true love and the existence of God-ordained soul mates, but the conversation drags when it’s supposed to be a near-climax to their burgeoning attraction thanks Emily being a largely unlikeable figure (due in large part to Griffith’s performance) and the rather poor development and poorer sense of purpose centered around the love story angle. The scene never stands a chance to resonate. A Stranger Among Us can never decide if it’s a police procedural or a story of unrequited love. The two disconnect from the start and never find a joint harmony; the film fizzles through every fumbled attempt to build sexual tension, and it can’t find much firmer footing as Emily attempts to sort out the truth behind the killing and the diamond theft, either, in large part because it never evolves into the film’s central focus, always competing with a loser of a side story that ultimately takes center stage.

Almost equally, if not more, detrimental to the film’s success is a miscast and flat Melanie Griffith. The actress never finds a rhythm or cadence for her character. She cannot sell herself as a cop. Her character is portrayed as one with a gritty background, who knows the city streets and the dark recesses of the human condition, who sees through the infallible Hasidic way of life and understands the core, raw, essential nature of the human condition, but hers is a performance that betrays the character’s innermost life story and abilities as a police officer. There’s no edge, no sense of purpose, and many scenes play as if she is reciting her lines, not living the character. Her lack of ability to sell the character extends to the film’s flimsy romance angle, too, here perhaps not so much her fault as it is a shortcoming of the script, but then again Eric Thal does a much better job at presenting his own struggles as he wards off Emily’s advances and clearly wrestles with his own external desires as they clash with his long-held personal and religious code.

A Stranger Among Us Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

A Stranger Among Us doesn't exactly dazzle, but Mill Creek's presentation is fairly firm and more than adequate. The image transitions from soft to somewhat sharp; some lower light and more warmly lit shots sometimes struggle to maintain an edge, but well-lit scenes often manage to impress with tangible sharpness and filmic definition. Textural essentials rarely dazzle, but city exteriors, select clothes, and faces find acceptable detail levels. Colors are neutral, like the detailing not particularly stout but never appearing excessively faded. Black level fluctuation is noticeable but minimal, always hovering somewhere relatively close to true. Ditto flesh tones. A modest grain structure remains intact, but it does compete with some occasional macroblocking and processing noise.

A Stranger Among Us Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

A Stranger Among Us features a two-channel DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack. It delivers pleasing enough spacing and musical clarity with surprisingly rich notes and detail of presentation. City din never wants for much more spacing and immersion under the two-channel constraints, but clarity is sometimes left by the wayside in favor of a general mushiness. That holds true for much of the track; even without the efficiency and pinpoint clarity of newer, more robustly engineered multichannel tracks, most elements find adequate-to-agreeable positioning and serviceable detail, even more intensive elements like screeching police sirens, beeping equipment in the back of an ambulance, or gunshots. Dialogue finds a nicely imaged front-center location. Vocal clarity is fine.

A Stranger Among Us Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of A Stranger Among Us contains no supplemental content. The film begins playback immediately upon selecting it from the main menu screen.

A Stranger Among Us Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There's an interesting duality at work in A Stranger Among Us, the story of an undercover cop and her attraction to a man whom she cannot have, but the two never jive. The world is well defined, as is Ariel's adherence Hasidic code, but Lumet and Writer Robert J. Avrech struggle with tonal balance and approach. The tales never feel joined in a purposeful manner, always playing as more independent of one another rather than organically connected. Griffith's performance is stale at best and Lumet and Editor Andrew Mondshein's pacing struggles to make sense of the movie's dual narratives. Mill Creek's featureless Blu-ray delivers adequate 1080p video and fair two-channel lossless audio. Worth a look on the super-cheap.