A Perfect Murder

Director: Andrew Davis
Screenplay: Patrick Smith Kelly, based on the play "Dial M For Murder" by Frederick Knott
Starring: Michael Douglas, Gwyneth Paltrow, Viggo Mortensen, David Suchet

John's Review

    Director Davis (The Fugitive) assumes the unenviable task of remaking Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder. Douglas, who seems to have fallen into a gluttenony of rules, playing the high money making control freak, (Wall Street, The Game, Disclosure), plays a financier with trophy wife Paltrow hanging on his arm, though she's carrying on a steamy affair with a buff young artist (Mortensen). Douglas gets wise and confronts Mortensen, and the two money grubbers hatch the "perfect" plan to off the wife. The murder gets botched, and Paltrow wanders through the rest of the movie a doe-eyed victim uncovering the web of deceit.
    One fantasy the movie gratifies is inhabiting a jaw-droppingly elegant Fifth Avenue apartment with a spectacular spiral staircase and a glorious view of Central Park. Another is that the truly rich who can afford such grandeur must be truly dissatisfied. Steven and Emily Taylor, the attractive childless couple who live in this palace, fit the bill perfectly.
    As the movie opens, Emily (Paltrow) is cavorting in bed with a handsome young painter named David Shaw (Mortensen) in his Brooklyn warehouse loft. Little does she know that her lover is a ruthless con man and gigolo operating under a false name who has spent many years in prison. Nor is she aware that her husband (Douglas), a shady Wall Street bond salesman, is about to lose his shirt as one of his Asian schemes goes bust. Even worse, her husband has discovered her clandestine affair and compiled a devastating dossier on David that he is planning to use against them both at the appropriate moment.
    Steven could be the Gordon Gekko of Wall Street a decade later. The thrill of the chase has drained away, and all that's left is a panicked psychopathic acquisitiveness. Douglas, makes Steven a pleasure to loathe. When he approaches David with a cash offer of $500,000 to murder his wife (Emily is independently wealthy, and the Taylors have no prenuptial agreement) and make it look as though she were slain by an intruder, Steven descends from villain into monster.
    Ultimately, the sleekness of A Perfect Murder can't conceal the fact that its characters are stick figures in an elaborate three-way game featuring two cats and one very wiley mouse. Of the three, Ms. Paltrow's Emily is the most problematic. Although the movie halfheartedly tries to portray her as a damsel in distress, that effort doesn't wash. You find yourself almost hoping that Steven gets away with it.
    Pursuing her suspicions of a murder plot against her, Emily fearlessly ventures into a seamier section of Brooklyn where she charms a sinister drug dealer by using her linguistic skills. When seeking privileged information about her husband's financial status, she knows exactly where to go and whom to talk to.
    Mortensen has the movie's richest role as the duplicitous painter who is coerced into agreeing to murder his lover. In the scenes in which he is supposed to appear sympathetic, he insinuates enough surliness to give his character a disquieting undertone of potential violence.
    The creepiest aspect of A Perfect Murder is that there really is no contest between love and money. The movie is right in tune with the mood fostered by the booming late-90's economy. In a climate like this, the hottest sex in the world doesn't stand a chance against the possibility of raking in a quick half-million.

Grade: C+

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