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Regular
Price $9.99
Starring:
Melanie Griffith,
John Pankow,
Tracy Pollan,
Lee Richardson,
Mia Sara,
Directed By:
Sidney Lumet,
Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Release Date: 1992-07-17
Studio: Walt Disney Video
Format:
Closed-captioned,
Color,
DVD-Video,
NTSC,
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Editorial Reviews and
DVD Information about
A Stranger Among Us
Description
Academy Award(R)-nominated star Melanie Griffith (Best Actress nominee -- WORKING GIRL, 1988) turns in a winning performance as detective Emily Eden, a tough New York City cop forced to go undercover to solve a puzzling murder. Her search for the truth takes her into a secret world of unwritten law and unspoken power, a world where the only way out is deeper in! Delivering edge-of-your-seat excitement that won't let you go, this action-packed thriller is sure to entertain you with its sizzling star power, electrifying story, and nonstop surprises!
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Customer Reviews for
A Stranger Among Us
A Film I watch over and over.
A Great movie. I watch this over and over! A good intro to Chassidic Brooklyn.A Stranger Among Us
Stranger Among Us
I received the movie in a timely matter, pretty fast actually. I really enjoy this movie.
Thank you so much for the immediate response and delivery. I would order again.
Sincerely,
Mona GhaffariA Stranger Among Us
Stranger in a Strange Land
The film is played to emphasize the culture clash between Hasidic Jewish culture and familiar modern America with it's lose of family and structure--unfortunately at the expense of believable plot at times. New York cop Emily Eden (Melanie Griffith) showing up to speak to a Hasidic Jewish Rabbi in a short skirt seems hardly likely. Nor is she a believable cast as a hardboiled cop with a policeman dad who has trouble showing affection, but it is perhaps just that lost quality that actually adds to the impact of the movie as Emily finds a sense of direction in her own life while losing her heart to a Hasidic Jew, Ariel (Eric Thal) in a doomed romance that will leave her a better person.
A Stranger Among Us
A Shiksa Among Us * * * 1/2
A STRANGER AMONG US is almost universally considered one of Director Sidney Lumet's weakest creations, a wholly derivative film based on Harrison Ford's small but memorable tour de force in WITNESS. Lumet takes Ford's sojourn among the Amish of Pennsylvania and transmogrifies it into Melanie Griffith's sojourn among the Hasidim of Brooklyn.
Lumet does his usual splendid job of presenting New York City dynamically and organically, not just as a city of steel and glass, walls and bridges, towers and tunnels, but as a place where people live.
Lumet couldn't have found a more shiksa-ish shiksa to play the shiksa than Melanie Griffith, but Griffith doesn't carry the role of tough as nails plainclothes Detective NYPD Emily Eden very well. To start, the name "Emily Eden" is redolent of crinolines, bubble baths, and lavender. Sure, her character is as crude, profane and inappropriate a cop as the role demands in the face of the exclusively Commandment-driven life of the Hasidim, but Griffith herself is as soft and squeaky as a plush toy. She's CUTE, which makes her very unbelievable.
This would have been a breakthrough role for the beautiful, hard-edged Theresa Russell a la IMPULSE, but chalk it all up to a missed opportunity. Good supporting roles are played by Tracy Pollan as Mara and James Gandolfini in his debut performance as---guess what--a Mafiosi.
The plot is strictly generic and off-the-shelf. One of the younger Hasidic diamond merchants is murdered, and all evidence points to it being an inside job. Assigned as investigator, Griffith is posted in the home of the aged Rebbe, a Holocaust survivor, and becomes acquainted with, and then attracted to, his adopted son and lineage heir Ariel.
This film excels (and it does excel) in giving the general audience a glimpse into the close-knit community and mutually interdependent lifestyle of Hasidic Jews. This may not seem like a very big acheivement in our fractionalized modern world, but the film is a wonderful vehicle for presenting the multiculturalism of New York's varied communities with respect. The people portrayed in this film become far less alien, familiar and likeable---understandable---when seen through Lumet's lens. For this, if for no other reason, A STRANGER AMONG US is a worthy addition to Lumet's body of work.A Stranger Among Us
A Stranger Among Us
This isn't the greatest movie in the world, but I enjoy watching love stories. It is a quick, easy, non-thinking movie that can be thrown in when you want background noise or an easy mystery.A Stranger Among Us
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