A PERFECT MURDER
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: This is an updating and a remake of a
great stage thriller. The new version adds some
complexity to the story, but nothing that could
really be called an improvement. This story did
not need to be moved into the world of
international finance and the ultra-rich. Director
Andrew Davis has little grasp on what made the
original characters compelling. He delivers a
version that is dark, humorless, and violent.
Rating: 5 (0 to 10), low +1 (-4 to +4)
I did not care much for Alfred Hitchcock's DIAL M FOR MURDER when I saw it as a child. It seemed a set-bound and a rather dry exercise. Seeing it as an adult was an entirely different experience. It clearly is a stage play, but it has to be one of the most brilliant stage thrillers ever written. The entire play works like a well-oiled machine of surprising complexity. It was *the classic* stage murder thriller. Compared to DIAL M FOR MURDER, SLEUTH and DEATHTRAP are merely gimmicky. For DIAL M FOR MURDER, the playwright really sat down and sweated all the details. The one unrealistic touch is that main character Tony Wendes is just too brilliant to be fully believed. He has a mind like a computer, thinking out all possibilities and reconstructing his plans instant by instant. The play must have been rewritten over and over as Frederick Knott rethought the possibilities. The remake A PERFECT MURDER has some of the plot, but it loses a lot in the transition.
In A PERFECT MURDER, the Taylors are probably one of the top 100 prominent couples in the country. Steven Taylor (played by Michael Douglas) is an international commodities dealer who makes deals in the hundreds of millions of dollars every day. Emily Bradford Taylor (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) is an heiress to one of the richest families in America. She has a position working as translator at the United Nations General Assembly and as an aide to the Unite States ambassador. But Emily has other positions she likes more, fooling around on the side with promising new artist David Shaw (Viggo Mortensen). Shaw has a future as an artist, but he also has a past, and that he would like to keep quiet. Unfortunately Steven Taylor knows all about Shaw's past and has his own plans for Shaw's future. The plans include killing Emily Taylor. Saying any more about the new and somewhat cluttered plot would really be telling too much.
Michael Douglas is something of a master at portraying quiet smoldering anger on the screen. He is a good choice to show rage, but he cannot bring to the role the kind of passionless thinking machine quality that Ray Milland had in the original. Luckily this script does not call for Steven Taylor to make the sort of quick rethinking of problems that Tony Wendes did in the original film. Paltrow really does have the sort of pristine good looks that are reminiscent of Grace Kelly in the first film. There are even scenes where she looks a bit like Grace Kelly. The problem is that the film insists on showing her in bed with her lover. 1990s audiences demand to see some flesh, I suppose. There clearly is passion going on though nothing is seen that really counts as nudity. But what we do see of the sex is enough that she no longer appears to the viewer to be an innocent. And that loses her the audience's sympathy. We are left with several cold and unsympathetic characters wandering around on the dark sets of this film. I should mention that Dariusz Wolski shot the film and if that name is unfamiliar, he also filmed THE CROW and DARK CITY. That should tell you that he likes under-lit sets to create a cold and dark feel. And this film certainly has that. Viggo Mortensen plays the third leg of the romantic triangle. He does not have much screen presence, but he does have a very realistic look. Rounding out the cast, but appallingly under-used, is David Suchet as Detective Mohamed Karaman. I suspect he had a bigger role in the original script. It is his character in the original play who does the real detective work. But rumors say that the end of the film was re-shot and presumably his role was cut down in size. Perhaps test audiences thought him solving the crime was a little too close to what he does in his TV persona as Hercule Poirot. But for whatever the reason Suchet had only a small part, and it was a serious waste to have such a good character actor in so tiny a role.
If you have seen the original film, there will still be plot twists to keep you guessing, but you will also get an appreciation of how good material can sour in the wrong hands. It takes a remake like A PERFECT MURDER to show the viewer how much has changed in the 1990s conventions of films and to appreciate the genius of an Alfred Hitchcock. This cold and dark remake gets a 5 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1998 Mark R. Leeper
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