Detective Emily Eden (Melanie Griffith) is an aggressive NYPD detective. Her partner Nick gets shot. She is assigned to find a missing Hasidic Jew named Yaakov. She discovers that he's been killed and $720k of diamonds are missing. She thinks it's an inside job and goes undercover in the community with the help of the rebbe's adopted son (Eric Thal) and daughter Leah (Mia Sara). Mara (Tracy Pollan) is Yaakov's widow.

Melanie Griffith is horrible as the tough as nail cop. She is laughable at the role. Then she goes into the conservative Jewish world like a bull in a china shop. It's an interesting world but it's treated with a heavy hand by Griffith's flirtatious character. Director Sidney Lumet has the wrong leading lady and it's too broadly written anyways. I'm sure a modern policewoman undercover in the Hasidic world could be interesting but Griffith is not doing it right.

I do love Sidney Lumet and most of the films he's done in his storied career. Even in A Stranger Among Us his love for his city of New York shines through. And he's Jewish which should have told him that this was a script to stay away from.

Melanie Griffith stars as a New York City homicide cop who catches the case of a young Hassidic man who works in the diamond district as many do stabbed to death. His occupation could have been the cause of his demise or it might be more personal.

In any event she decides to go live in Williamsburg among the Hassidic Jews the better to catch the killer. While there she develops sexual heat with Eric Thal, son of the Grand Rebbe in the sect. In a reverse of those old Doris Day and Sandra Dee roles it's the man zealously guarding his virtue. He's the planned successor and no Shiksa is going to disrupt that.

I'm sorry there's no way on God's green earth that the Hassidim would have cooperated with a female and a non-Jew in an investigation of anything. They're that insular and Sidney Lumet knew that.

Only the most ignorant of Goyim will buy for a second A Stranger Among Us.

I truly enjoyed this movie, despite bad reviews and comments about Melanie Griffith's role being not suited to her. It takes a cynical worldly woman cop (Griffith) into the strange world of Orthodox Jews when she goes undercover to investigate a murder. Her gradual acceptance into that world and growing respect for their customs and traditions was very moving to me. The warmth in the family meals and celebrations can be felt by the viewer and lets you understand how this cloistered world with rules for everything starts to look good to a woman who is so jaded and cynical in her outlook on life. The attraction between her and a Talmudic student provides sexual tension to the storyline, and the concept of finding the one person in all the world who was meant for you was so romantic.