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Rated: PG-13; Genre: Mystery; With: Eric Thal and Melanie Griffith
C
By Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman is a film critic for EW

A STRANGER AMONG US (PG-13) 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 who goes undercover in the Brooklyn Hasidic community, where she learns that Jews Are People Too. Sidney Lumet's film was clearly modeled on another modern thriller about an anachronistic religious sect (can't you just hear the pitch line?-''It's Witness with matzoh balls!''). Lumet, though, fails to work up his usual cop-movie excitement, and the Hasidim aren't drawn with any emotional complexity. Griffith spends most of the movie 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


Posted Jul 31, 1992
 

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