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REMAKE OF HITCHCOCK HAS TOO MAY TWISTS
By Joe Holleman
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

There are two big problems with "A Perfect Murder," a thriller about a man who hires someone to kill his wife.

First, it is a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder." Competing against the master of suspense is a dangerous, and unsuccessful, undertaking.

Second, the plot twists simply muddy the waters. In previous reviews, I've praised thrillers that didn't throw in so many twists that they tie themselves in knots. Here, director Andrew Davis and writer Patrick Smith Kelly get hogtied.

The basic story is the same between the two movies. In this one, Steven Taylor (Michael Douglas) is a rich guy with a young beautiful wife, Emily (Gwyneth Paltrow), who happens to be having an affair with a young, wild artist named David Shaw (Viggo Mortensen).

Taylor learns that Shaw is an ex-con, wanted in Florida for fraud. So he offers Shaw a way out: Kill Emily, get $500,000 and leave town. Taylor walks Shaw through the couple's ritzy apartment and how to kill her - the perfect murder.

One problem. On the night of Emily's scripted demise, she manages to kill her attacker. When the intruder is unmasked, it is not Shaw. I won't go any farther, for those who will see this movie.

So let's look at how the original was better.

Hitchcock's movie had Ray Milland as the plotting husband, Grace Kelly as the wife and Robert Cummings as her lover.

(I don't rate Hitchcock's version as one of his best. It was another of his one-set experiments, like "Rope," and I'm not a big fan. And it was shot in 3-D, which makes for some meaningless close-ups to show off the novelty.)

The best aspect of the old version is that Kelly, the victim, becomes the suspect. In the new version, Paltrow's character is never a suspect, so we lose that tension.

Also, Milland's villain was cheerful and loving, which makes his evil all the more unsettling. Here, Douglas is bad from the start and seems to be reprising his role from "Wall Street." Paltrow never has wowed me with her performances. Here, she barely matches Kelly's mediocre acting talents but doesn't come close in style.

By using the lover as the murderer, this new version is needlessly complicated, which then requires illogical explanations.

For those of you who don't mind, ask yourself one question after you see it. If Shaw has the tape, why does he bother with the murder to get Taylor's money?

But the real question is this: Why bother to remake a good movie and then change all the best parts?

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