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setsuledMichael Douglas and Viggo Mortensen conspire to commit the perfect murder of Gwyneth Paltrow in 1998's A Perfect Murder, a loose remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder. It certainly doesn't improve on the original but its blander title is a fitting indicator of how unremarkable but not exactly bad the movie is.
Douglas plays another Wall Street guy, this time his name's Steven, and he's married to Paltrow's character, Emily. She's having an affair with pre-Lord of the Rings Viggo Mortensen who plays David, one of those bohemian movie artists who live in a massive loft space in a major city. Let's go back to that economy, okay?
It turns out Steven knows about his wife's affair but his reaction is to offer David half a million dollars to kill her. He gradually accepts the offer after some reluctance.
Well, let's get to the obvious question. Is it a perfect murder? The plan is to have David enter the wealthy couple's luxury apartment through a service door using Emily's key which Steven leaves taped under the railing of the stairwell. Steven knows Emily takes her bath at the same time he goes to his normal poker game which puts her in a vulnerable position while he has a solid alibi. It's very similar to the plot of Dial M for Murder and goes awry in basically the same way.
What are the flaws in this plan? Steven doesn't have as much leverage on David as Ray Milland's character has on his stooge in Dial M for Murder. Steven can reveal to people in town that David has a criminal past and an assumed name, but he doesn't have the blackmail material that Ray Milland has in the Hitchcock movie. A Perfect Murder combines two characters from the Hitchcock movie; the man the wife is having an affair with and the con-man who has to commit the actual murder. This makes Steven's proposal much riskier. There's a chance that David really does love Emily, as she apparently loves him, and the two might collude to effect Steven's demise.
Direction by Andrew Davis and cinematography by Dariusz Wolski are standard fare for a '90s thriller. Gwyneth Paltrow is very pretty and gives a good performance though there's not much to her character. She's a simultaneous translator fluent in multiple languages, reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn's character in Charade.
A Perfect Murder is available on The Criterion Channel.
