"You are a corporate spy, gaaaarrrrrgh." "You betrayed me, reeurgghhh." "You sunk my battleship, waaargh!" I'm not kidding, the man is a liability. If we characterise Berry's acting style here as Ingmar Bergman-Swedish, it's only fair to give Willis a tag. It's a good thing the story is grabby, as a leading lady we can't empathise with - there's only one engaging character in the whole film, ad agency gossip Gina (Clea Lewis) - means there has to be some reason to stick with the thing. It's not high art, but it's highly entertaining, challenging the viewer to work out what's going on, with the occasional flashback and piece of dialogue to help us along. If you like cat and mouse thrillers and can put up with Halle Berry scowling throughout the whole film - she really is a cold screen presence - this is worth sticking with. Cue twists and turns aplenty as suspects for the murder of Grace crawl out from under every piece of wood in the building and Ro wonders just who she can trust. Ro - under the alias of temp Catherine Pogue - gets a job at the agency and sets a honey trap for married online flirt Hill. For the late bunny boiler had been stalking a guy she'd met online, ad agency mogul Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis) - could he have killed her? Ro and ace communications assistant Miles (Giovanni Ribisi) are determined to find out.
This gets easier when Grace is murdered - she ceases to be an irritation and becomes the source of a story to get Ro (that's Rowena, not Berry's X-Men character Ororo) on top of the game again. It's apparent she and Ro - who, God knows why, uses a male byline for her stories - have a complicated relationship. Handily, a distraction from her troubles appears in the form of old pal Grace (Nicki Aycox).
Grrr, she's mad as hell and she's not going to take it any more.
Turns out that this sort of thing keeps happening to her, and she's just not getting the back-up from the boss, so she quits her job as the New York Courier's ace hack. Girl reporter Ro Price's (Halle Berry) latest case goes tits up when the hypocritical Senator she's about to expose pulls a few financial strings with her employers.