Director Andrew Davis has taken the classic Hitchcock film Dial M For Murder and turned it into this movie, A Perfect Murder. Now the clever reviewer would go through a thorough description on how the new film shapes up against the old one, going in depth about how the new improves on the old and fails where the old succeeded.
Well, I'm not a clever reviewer. Okay, I am a clever reviewer, it's just that my knowledge of old films is limited to what I have seen and I've never seen Dial M For Murder. So, I'll go about this review in my regular dull fashion.
We begin. Immediately we understand that Emily Bradford (Gwyneth Paltrow) a successful UN aide and fortune heiress, is having an affair on her corporate head of a husband, Steven Taylor (Michael Douglas), with artist David Shaw. We come to know that David and Emily are in love with each other, while Emily's marriage to Steven was more social than romantic. At an engagement with her husband, Emily runs into David (actually, Steven wasn't supposed to be there), and the two run into Steven. You can't tell, but Steven suspects immediately.
So Steven, so raught with embarassment/anger/jealousy confronts David, having already investigated his background and finding him to not be David the media artist at all but some ex-con con-artist who swindles money from rich women whom he wines and dines. Steven, playing up the three strikes rule (one of the stupidest US laws), says he won't turn the probation refugee in if he does one thing, kill his wife (for $500,000). The thing about David is he really loves Emily, and he's a non-violent con-man. So David hires his ex cellmate to do the job for him (Steven having set up the whole murder scenereo so that he has an undoubtable alibi, and a perfect murder). But the perfection goes horribly wrong as a kitchen utensil winds up in the assailent's neck and Emily remains alive.
From there Emily suspects Steven had something to do with the murder attempt, so she does some investigating of her own, which turns up information on both Steven and David that will definitely surprise the viewer. This is the second half of the film, which I will not go into any more in case I spoil some juicy details. Needless to say, this film is deliciously engaging from the beginning, especially the set up and (ahem) execution of the murder plan. But the second half, rife with blackmail, secrets, and even more murder is even better at enthralling the viewer. While the acting is pretty dead-pan from all parties, it's Andrew Davis' direction, a clever script, and a tense Hitchcockian score which really bring the film together.
A great film with only one loose end, the knife with her fingerprints (you'll know what I'm talking about when you see it).