| A Perfect Murder | |
| Director: | Andrew Davis |
| Producer: | Arnold Kopelson Anne Kopelson Peter MacGregor-Scott Christopher Mankiewicz |
| Music: | James Newton Howard |
| Cinematography: | Dariusz Wolski |
| Editing: | Dov Hoenig Dennis Virkler |
| Studio: | Kopelson Entertainment |
| Distributor: | Warner Bros. |
| Runtime: | 107 minutes |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English Arabic |
| Budget: | $60 million |
| Gross: | $128 million |
A Perfect Murder is a 1998 American crime thriller film directed by Andrew Davis and starring Michael Douglas, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Viggo Mortensen. It is a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 film Dial M for Murder, though the characters' names have been changed and much of the plot has been rewritten and altered from its original form. Loosely based on the play by Frederick Knott, the screenplay was written by Patrick Smith Kelly.[1]
Wall Street financier Steven Taylor is married to the much younger Emily. Meanwhile, a smitten Emily is having an affair with artist David Shaw, for whom she considers leaving Steven. Steven arrives at David's art studio the next day. Steven not only knows about the affair, but has carefully researched David's past. His real identity is Winston Lagrange, an ex-convict who cons rich women. Pointing out that he can easily send him back to prison, Steven instead recruits David into murdering Emily for $500,000.
Steven takes Emily's housekey and hides it outside the service entrance to their lavish Manhattan co-op apartment. David is to use the key to enter the apartment, kill her, and make it look like a robbery gone bad. At his weekly card game, Steven takes a break and uses his cellphone to make a call to an automated bank system, confirming his alibi, while using a second phone to call Emily. Emily answers in the kitchen and is attacked by a masked assailant, but stabs him in the neck with a meat thermometer. Steven returns, but finds the assailant's body. He takes the key from the body, puts it back on Emily's keychain, damages the service entrance door, and plants a screwdriver on the assailant. The NYPD arrives, led by Arab American Detective Moe Karaman. They remove the assailant's mask, but the body is not David's.
Soon after, Steven receives a call from David, who plays an audio tape of the two discussing the plan to kill Emily. They agree to meet at a local deli, where David demands the full $500,000 or he will turn Steven in.
Feeling suspicious, Emily confides in her friends that Steven would have inherited her whole $100 million fortune had she been killed. She quietly makes inquiries and learns that Steven's extremely risky margin trades on the stock market are unraveling. If he is unable to find enough money to cover the balance urgently, both Steven's finances and his credit will be completely wiped out.
Also realizing the key on her keychain belongs to the assailant, Emily confronts Steven. He explains that David is blackmailing them by threatening to kill Emily and Steven has been paying him off quietly to protect her from harm. When he saw her dead assailant in their kitchen, he assumed it was David and took the key from his pocket to shield Emily from facing murder charges. Despite Emily's tears and pleading, Steven lovingly insists that she is not to call the police.
After exchanging the money, Steven kills David in a private compartment on an Amtrak train, taking David's gun and the money. As he dies, a laughing David reveals he mailed the tape to Emily via courier service. Steven rushes home and finds the mail still unopened. He hides the money, gun and audio tape in his safe before showering.
Emily confronts him. She reveals that she knows everything, having found the tape in the safe and listened to it while he showered. As she turns away, Steven attacks her, vowing she will only leave him dead. After a brief fight, Emily grabs David's gun from the safe and kills Steven. NYPD Detective Karaman later comforts a heartbroken Emily, telling her not to blame herself; as she had no choice but to kill Steven in self defense.
In Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder, the characters played by Ray Milland and Grace Kelly are depicted as living in a modest London flat, although it is implied that they are quite wealthy, as Milland's character, Tony Wendice, is a retired tennis champion. Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow's characters are also shown as an extremely wealthy couple. Both Kelly and Paltrow's characters are shown as striking blondes. Both films make use of the mystery of the fact that no key was found on the dead man when he was killed by both Kelly and Paltrow's characters, as both their husbands had removed them in an attempt to pin the crime on their wives. Toward the beginning of Dial M For Murder, when Kelly and Robert Cummings are shown together in the Wendice flat, and Milland comes home, Kelly greets him with "There you are!" and kisses him. Presumably in homage to the original film, Douglas's character greets Paltrow exactly the same way when she arrives home to their apartment at the beginning of A Perfect Murder.
Throughout the film, Emily carries an Hermès Kelly bag, named after Grace Kelly who was often photographed carrying the model of purse.
The title A Perfect Murder matches the translation that was made in some countries of Hitchcock's film, known in Italian as Il delitto perfetto and in Spanish as Crimen perfecto; in French it was Le crime était presque parfait.
Principal photography began on October 14, 1997. Filming took place in & around New York City. The location of Steven & Emily's apartment was filmed at The Convent of The Sacred Heart building in Manhattan. The Bradford Mansion was filmed at the Salutation House in Long Island. Filming ended on January 13, 1998.
An alternate ending exists and is presented, with optional commentary, on the original Blu-ray disc release.[2] [3] In this version, Steven comes back from finding the key replaced where he had hidden it and Emily confronts him in the kitchen rather than in their foyer. The scene plays out with the same dialogue, but Steven never physically attacks her. He still tells her that the only way she'll leave him is dead, and she shoots him. Steven then says "You won't get away with this" before dying and Emily purposely injures herself, making it look like self-defense.
A Perfect Murder opened in second place at the box office behind The Truman Show, grossing $16,615,704 during its first weekend. It ended up with a total worldwide gross of $128,038,368.
A Perfect Murder received mixed reviews from critics.
Stephen Holden of The New York Times called it a "skillfully plotted update of Frederick Knott's play".[4] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly commented, " I’ve seen far worse thrillers than “A Perfect Murder,” but the movie is finally more competent than it is pleasurable. All that lingers from it is the color of money."[5]
Rita Kempley of The Washington Post noted, "The trouble is, we don't really much care about this philandering billionaire glamour puss, who seems perfectly capable of taking care of herself. We don't care about her husband or lover either. The story's most compelling character, an Arab American detective (the superb British actor David Suchet), becomes a minor player here. Nevertheless, like John Williams in the Hitchcock film, Suchet commits the film's only believable crime: He steals the show."[6]
Paul Clinton of CNN observed, "This production is stylishly mounted... Douglas is an excellent actor and a gifted producer. However, he should hang up his spurs when it comes to playing a romantic lead with women in their twenties."[7]
Roger Ebert, who gave the film three stars out of four, wrote "[It] works like a nasty little machine to keep us involved and disturbed; my attention never strayed".[8] Meanwhile, James Berardinelli wrote that the film "has inexplicably managed to eliminate almost everything that was worthwhile about Dial M for Murder, leaving behind the nearly-unwatchable wreckage of a would-be '90s thriller."[9]
A Perfect Murder holds a 57% "Rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 53 reviews. The site's consensus states: "A slick little thriller that relies a bit too much on surprise events to generate suspense."[10] It has a score of 50/100, based on 22 reviews ("mixed or average reviews") from Metacritic.[11]