As cold, hard and steely edged as a sword, The Business of Strangers-a psychodrama about what it means to be a woman in the cutthroat world of business-provides a great vehicle for two stars of different generations, veteran Stockard Channing (Six Degrees of Separation, Grease) and relative newcomer Julia Stiles (Save the Last Dance, 10 Things I Hate About You). That the script doesn't quite measure up to the tour-de-force performances is a shame.

Channing plays Julie Styron, a software company vice president, perpetually on the go and totally committed to the advancement of her career. So distanced is she from what most of us would call a normal life that she is content to conduct sessions with her shrink over the telephone from whatever hotel room she happens to be occupying at the moment. Her paranoia-probably justified, given the world she inhabits-is made clear when she's informed that her CEO wants to have dinner with her. She immediately sets up a meeting with a corporate headhunter (the oily Fred Weller), convinced that she's about to be fired. It is a credit to Channing's acting abilities that when Julie is not fired and is, instead, offered the position of CEO, it comes across as a mixed blessing-yes, the glass ceiling has been shattered but at what continuing personal cost?

Stiles is Paula Murphy, a lowly assistant in the company who early in the film is supposed to join Styron as a technical support person for one of Styron's presentations. Due to a plane foul-up she misses the meeting and Styron coldly fires her. Later, after Styron is made CEO, the two of them run into each other in the airport. Having nobody to celebrate with Styron "un-fires" Paula and offers to buy her a drink. So begins a night in which Styron's psyche is eventually stripped bare by Paula's carefully orchestrated questions and provocations.

The surprise here is Stiles. Playing Paula as two parts burgeoning psychopath to one part enlightening angel, she is absolutely riveting in every scene, more than holding her own against the formidable Channing. Her malevolent magnetism defies you to take your eyes off her for even a second. You won't be able to.

Paula's dual nature, however, represents one of the script's problems. She is a cipher-we are never given any insight into why she is behaving the way she is. That she can be as psychologically penetrating as she is hurtful moves the plot along nicely, but writer-director Patrick Stettner seems more interested in making sure that his sometimes-stagey dialogue (another problem) is delivered with every syllable in place rather than in character motivation. Add to this the movie's third-act foray into issues of "women's rage" that seem to date from the mid-1980s and we're left with a script that doesn't meet the standards set by Stiles' and Channing's performances.

Still, the movie is coldy effective in creating a milieu where duplicity is coin of the realm and the phrase "Trust me" is a ticket to oblivion. Stiles and Channing alone make the movie worth the price of admission.