Radha Mitchell Movie:

		List Price: $29.95		Label: Sony Pictures Salesrank: 55362 Released: January 29, 2002
		Our Price: $12.92
		Used Price: $1.94
		MPAA Rating: R (Restricted) Media: DVD

When Strangers Appear Reviews:
when strangers appear
2009-06-17 - purchased dvd because brother in laws house in NZ used in movie. good movie. happy with promptness of arrival from the US to NZ . dvd in excellent condition.

Not enough of Barry Wilson!
2008-05-22 - When Strangers Appear:

I agree with Tarantino (one of the Amazon reviewers, also most of the other reviewers. This is a great little thriller from start to finish. If that is what you are looking for, this DVD is for you!
However if you are a gay guy (like me) and looking to see a lot more of Barry Wilson (who plays Jack) look somewhere else. ...Barry's acting is no problem. He does a great job. But, that is where it stops!
Barry is a good looking guy, however, this film does not show him off and Barry keeps his shirt on. O well! So, if you're looking to see a lot more of Barry Wilson it does not happen on this DVD.
But When Strangers Appear: is a great ride.

Di'z of Di'zWi'z



gripping neo-Hitchcockian thriller
2007-05-06 - "When Strangers Appear" (2001) is just the sort of film I'm a sucker for. It's a tense, neo-Hitchcockian thriller with a crisp, clean visual style, a forceful sense of place, several great suspense sequences, very effective camera work, and one hell of a paranoid mood. The story concerns a young woman who for 48 hours becomes entangled in a mysterious manhunt when her path crosses with the wrong people on the Oregon coast. Or, as I really like to tell folks, it's about a waitress being chased by diabolical surfers.

The film was written and directed by New Zealand director Scott Reynolds. For me his first film, "The Ugly," was close to unwatchable, but then he released "Heaven," which showed a lot of promise. (And with any luck he'll break his 6-year dry spell and bring us something else soon.) Radha Mitchell and Josh Lucas are both very, very good in "When Strangers Appear," as is Kevin Anderson in his supporting role. The film has a few flaws, however. This includes a few too-self-conscious moments and the casting of Barry Watson as Jack, the man on the run. Still, the film is a must-see for fans of tense contemporary thrillers that lie in the shadow of Hitch, or for anyone who's up for the sort of gripping, old-fashioned good time provided by films like "Red Rock West," "Nick of Time," and "Breakdown."

Tarantino
2007-04-29 - This one keeps you guessing about everyone except Beth (Radha Mitchell). Even when pieces to this ingenious plot start fitting together, there are still more surprises. Great cinematography and features like the cafe, and the gas station are almost characters themselves the way the camera frames them and then slowly brings the viewer into the scene. When it was over I kept thinking Quentin Tarantino would somehow appear in the credits as "Inspired by..." or "Taken from an idea by...". Loved it and am happy to add it to my collection.

A drifter comes calling
2007-01-02 - -A pretty lady called Beth owes a Diner out in the middle of nowhere when one day a stranger called Peter comes in a little shook up and claims that he's being chased by three men that later on come in the Diner. Beth must now decide whether she can trust the stranger or whether the stranger is rather the one that should be feared and not the three men after him.

-The movie is a twisted little tale in which you really don't know who to trust with a little character moments sprinkled in there for the sake of it. It does some things right but it I think my ultimate problem with it was the whole "being there, done better" nature of the movie. All the characters seem shallow because we've seen them all before. The tough beautiful girl that knows how to take care of herself, the good guy that start of as a nice guy then change into something sinister, and of course the misunderstood guy that everyone thinks is bad but is actually good. I think I would have liked this a lot more if it was a straight drama instead of trying to inject all those tired and boring movie clichés. It would have been nice to get to know more about Beth other than the minuscule info that we learn about her, and the whole rape thing that apparently happened with her and the cop could have used some exploration.

-My least favorite of cliché when it comes to movies is that loud brass that usually plays when the camera quickly turns around to reveal someone standing there, or in many cases nothing there. This movie does have moments like that, as well as cheap stuff like false scares and playing deep booms in the subs whenever there's a quite moment in the movie to build false tension. There is also that inevitable fight with the bad guy which concludes with the bad guy suffering a pretty fiery fate. Sometimes clichés work very well in a movie that knows how to use them, but in this it just feels all to familiar and fails to garner any interest. It really hurts to say that about a movie with Radha Mitchell and Josh Lucas in it but that's my opinion about this movie.

-We all know Josh Lucas as the sweet southern guy that makes women melt and he doesn't dispel that charm with this movie since the misses loved him in this, but he does do a pretty good job as a bad guy. He's no Michael Ironside but he's still okay as the trusting guy that turns out to be the problem. He got a little cliché towards the end doing the typical bad guy stuff like knowing that the heroine is hiding and that tired evil close up smile that all bad guys share, but I don't think it's a movie that's meant to have great acting so I can't complain much.

- Barry Watson *you know that dude from "7th Heaven* plays the drifter that at first we don't know whether to trust or not till significant time has passed. He's all right but he pretty much just plays the wounded guy that's trying to get someone to trust him. Radha Mitchell plays the lovely Beth and of all her movies that I've seen her in this is probably the only one that I was disappointed with her performance. Just a little difficult to buy her character in the movie but she still gives it her all and even gets to do some pretty hair raising stunts like frying bacon which must have been hell for since she's such a strict vegetarian. Just don't think that when look back on her amazing career we'll be talking about this too much. Despite her characters rough relationship with Lucas' character I'm guessing the two actors got along really well since Lucas participated in Mitchell's directorial debut "Four Reasons".

-The logic of the movie can be pretty odd at times. There's a sequence towards the end when Beth has a chance to escape in a car, but instead of doing that which any normal human being would, she decides it will be best if she rammed her car into the cars of the bad guys which pretty much prevents her from ever having a chance of getting away. If it were me I'd speed the hell out of there and go get help instead of wrecking my only chance of escape. There's also the whole thing with Peter waiting for the bad guys to start breaking into the bathroom before he climbs up the vent. It seems to me that when you have crazy killers on your tail you'd want to be as far away from em as possible. But the movie is meant to be a B movie or whatever, and a lot of the reviewers on here love it so I guess I'm in the minority in not loving this.

-It has a nice concept that I would have liked expanded on a lot better and with less tired clichés, but it's all right for what it is which I'm guessing is a B movie so people should find some entertainment in it. Just don't expect a masterpiece

*PS* Stay tuned for the end credits, there's a set up for a possible sequel.