A Stranger Among Us (1992)

It would be hard to think of a worse idea than casting Melanie Griffith, with her soft-as-down little-girl voice, as a jaded New York homicide cop. Here's one, though: casting her as a jaded New York homicide cop who goes undercover in the Brooklyn Hasidic community, where she learns that Jews Are People Too. A Stranger Among Us was obviously modeled on another modern thriller about an anachronistic religious sect (can't you just hear the pitch meeting? — ''It's Witness with matzoh balls!''). But the director, Sidney Lumet (Serpico, Q&A), fails to work up his usual cop-movie excitement, and the Hasidim aren't drawn with any emotional complexity. Griffith spends most of the time trying to seduce a sexy young Hasid who is described as being a ''Mozart'' of Jewish learning. Sorry, but as played by the placidly appealing Eric Thal, he seems more like the Rob Lowe of Jewish learning. C

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