They seem like the perfect couple, Emily and Steven Taylor - rich and pretty and socially active and in love: beautiful people.

And it's true - except for a few little flaws, like that she's having an affair with this bohemian painter she's found, and that his wealth has gone poof in the securities market, and that he's on to her liaison and has a plan to kill her and collect her $100 million inheritance.

Emily and Steven are the leads in director Andrew Davis' absorbing new film, A Perfect Murder, and if old-time movie fans mistake them for the leads in Alfred Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder," they can be forgiven: Both films derive from the same Frederick Knott play.

(Before we get further, let's settle one thing: It's no sin to remake "Dial M for Murder." Hitchcock's picture is stagy, talky and slow, not worthy of mention among the master's top 20 films. In 1967 Hitchcock said, "There isn't very much we can say about that one... I could just as well have shot the whole film in a telephone booth.")

Playing roles originated on screen by Grace Kelly and Ray Milland are the fetching Gwyneth Paltrow and the sinister Michael Douglas, who seem to relish the dark, ugly tones that screenwriter Patrick Smith Kelly has teased out of Knott's work.

Where the original called for the husband to merely suspect his wife of infidelity, A Perfect Murder opens with a scene of Emily in bed with her starving artist lover (Viggo Mortensen); she's no innocent.

And Steven has flaws besides greed and vengefulness: He's the most controlling sort of older husband, choosing his wife's outfits, ordering dinners and so forth, even though she's accomplished enough to holds a position of responsibility at the United Nations.

Steven confronts the artist, whom he has discovered to be a convicted con man, and coerces him into agreeing to murder Emily, providing a prefab scenario - the "perfect murder" of the title. But Steven doesn't count on Emily's strength: She turns the tables on her would-be killer, and a cat-and-mouse game between husband, wife and lover ensues, all under the calmly suspicious eyes of a detective (David Suchet).

Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski ("Dark City," "The Crow") has crafted a richly dark world. Though the film is set largely amid the splendors of wealthy Manhattan, it's got a burnished, shadowy look that deepens its atmosphere of doom.

Fine, too, are the tricks of pace and perspective that Davis ("The Fugitive") contrives. This is no hoked-up thriller like "Ransom" but rather a plausibly claustrophobic and tense story that slowly tightens as the worlds of three people become more and more bound in unholy acts.

The best thing in the picture, though, is the acting. Paltrow never has played a more convincing modern woman - smart, secure and independent, yet girlish in matters of the heart. Douglas is at his oily best - Gordon Gekko a decade later with a trophy wife, a failing business and a blacker heart. Suchet makes a profound and sympathetic policeman of Arabic descent, and Mortensen adds yet another fine supporting turn to the likes of his work in "G.I. Jane" and "Daybreak."