A Stranger Among Us

A Stranger Among Us casts Melanie Griffith as Emily Eden, a tough-as-nails cop who must go undercover within a strict Hasidic community to solve a murder – with the film detailing the inevitable culture clash that ensues and Emily’s eventual crush on a devout man named Ariel (Eric Thal). It’s clear virtually from the get-go that director Sidney Lumet, working from a screenplay by Robert J. Avrech, isn’t looking to take a subtle approach to the material, as A Stranger Among Us is rife with laughably heavy-handed instances of plot and character development – with the entirety of Emily’s character arc handled especially poorly and negatively coloring the remainder of the proceedings. (It’s impossible not to groan inwardly, for example, as Emily begins correcting friends and coworkers about elements of the Jewish culture after being around them for just a few days.) And while Avrech’s script often proves an eye-opening look at the seriously backwards Hasidic community, A Stranger Among Us suffers from an excessively deliberate pace that effective highlights the less-than-engrossing storyline – with Emily and Ariel’s burgeoning romance striking all the wrong notes throughout (ie there’s just no chemistry between these two disparate figures). It’s likely a testament to Lumet’s steady directorial hand that A Stranger Among Us never quite morphs into the all-out trainwreck it threatens to become, with the film’s watchable atmosphere – albeit in a this-is-more-entertaining-than-watching-paint-dry sort of way – ensuring that it never quite becomes the worst film in Lumet’s solid body of work.

** out of ****