The Business of Strangers

A corporate crocodile (Stockard Channing) and her assistant (Julia Stiles) stuck at an airport hotel toy with each other's psyches in this unsettling, canny film of Machiavellian manipulation, mind games and sexual conjecture. After forming a certain adversarial bond, Stiles reveals in private that a young business shark pal of Channing's (Frederick Weller) had raped her best friend in college, and the two women decide to avenge her, with troubling results. While all of this plays out with palpable tension under the taut direction of rookie writer/director Patrick Stettner, the fact that Stiles' veracity is in question the whole time means that the film begins to lose some of its potency in the second act, despite sturdy performances. Optional. (R. Blackwelder)