1/10/2021 A Perfect Murder - Wikipedia

A Perfect Murder
A Perfect Murder is a 1998 American crime thriller film directed
A Perfect Murder
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 are all changed,
and over half the plot is completely rewritten and altered. Loosely
based on the play by Frederick Knott, the screenplay was written by
Patrick Smith Kelly.[1]

Contents
Plot
Cast
Comparisons to the original film
Production
Alternate ending
Reception Theatrical release poster
Box office
Directed by Andrew Davis
Critical response
Produced by Arnold
References
Kopelson
External links Anne Kopelson
Peter
Macgregor-
Plot Scott
Christopher
Steven Taylor is a Wall Street financier married to Emily, a
Mankiewicz
translator for the United Nations. When his risky personal
investments start unraveling, he intends to access Emily's personal Written by Patrick Smith
fortune of $100 million to cover his losses. Meanwhile, Emily enjoys Kelly
an affair with painter David Shaw and is considering leaving Steven. Based on Dial M for
Steven meets David at a gala, and asks to visit David's studio in Murder
Brooklyn.
by Frederick
Steven arrives at David's studio the next day. He reveals that he Knott
knows about the affair, and used his influence to investigate David's Starring Michael
criminal past as an ex-convict who cons rich women out of their Douglas
money. Steven offers David $500,000 to murder Emily. When David
responds that he and Emily are in love, Steven reminds him his next Gwyneth
arrest will mean 15 years imprisonment. Paltrow
Viggo
Steven hides the door key from Emily's keyring outside the service Mortensen
entrance to their lavish Manhattan co-op apartment. David is to use
the key, kill her, and make it look like a robbery. At his card game, David Suchet
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Steven takes a break and uses his cellphone to make a call to an Sarita
automated bank system, adding to his alibi, while using a second Choudhury
phone to call Emily. Emily answers in the kitchen and is attacked by
a masked assailant, but stabs them in the neck with a meat Music by James Newton
thermometer. Howard
Cinematography Dariusz Wolski
Steven returns expecting Emily to be dead, but finds the assailant's
body. He takes the key from the body and puts it back on Emily's Edited by Dov Hoenig
keychain. Police arrive, led by Detective Karaman. They remove the Dennis Virkler
assailant's mask and Karaman notices that Steven is surprised – the Production Kopelson
body is not David's. Outside, David watches the body being removed company Entertainment
from the building in a black bag and assumes it to be Emily.
Distributed by Warner Bros.
Steven takes Emily to stay at her mother's. A sobbing David receives Release date June 5, 1998
a call from Emily telling him she is fine, and will be back soon.
Steven calls David afterwards and organizes a meet on a ferry. Emily Running time 107 minutes
visits her coworker, Raquel, and tells her she has decided to leave Country United States
Steven.
Language English
Emily uses her connections to speak to a bank executive, learning of Turkish
Steven's financial troubles. She then informs Karaman, who says Budget $60 million
that Steven's alibi is solid, though there is the minor concern that the
Box office $128 million
dead assailant did not have keys of any kind on his body. Still losing
money, Steven receives a call from David, who plays an audio tape of
the two discussing the plan to kill Emily and demands the full $500,000 or he will turn Steven in.

Emily returns to her apartment for the first time, but her key does not work. This spurs her to go to the
apartment of the assailant, discovering that her key unlocks his door. Emily confronts Steven with this
and his financial problems. Steven responds with David's sordid past and accuses him of being a
blackmailer conning her and threatening him. When he saw the dead body in their kitchen, he assumed
it was David and took the key from his pocket so as not to implicate Emily. Steven goes to David's loft
with the cash, but finds a note directing him to a park. David's phone rings, and Steven answers – it is a
ticketing agent, confirming David's train to Montreal. Steven meets David in a park and swaps the
money for the audio tape.

Reaching the private compartment on the train, David opens the bathroom door; Steven lunges out and
stabs him, taking David's gun and the money. A dying David laughs, revealing he mailed a copy of 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 Emily enters the room.

Steven showers then dresses for dinner, but Emily suggests they stay in instead. As she heads out to pick
up food, she mentions that they should have the locks changed since her key is missing. Steven checks
the service entrance, finds the key he hid for David, and realizes that the attacker had put it back after
unlocking the door. Emily suddenly appears, revealing that she knows everything now, having found the
tape in the safe while he showered. When she turns to leave, Steven attacks her. A brief fight ensues,
ending when Emily uses David's gun (from the safe) to kill Steven.

Karaman and his officers arrive. Emily plays David's tape, then explains what happened after she told
Steven, to which Karaman replies: "What else could you do?"

Cast
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Michael Douglas as Steven Taylor

Gwyneth Paltrow as Emily Bradford Taylor
Viggo Mortensen as David Shaw
David Suchet as Mohamed Karaman
Sarita Choudhury as Raquel Martinez
Constance Towers as Sandra Bradford
Novella Nelson as Ambassador Alice Wills
Michael P. Moran as Bobby Fain
Gerry Becker as Roger Brill
Will Lyman as Jason Gates

Comparisons to the original film

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.

Production
Principal photography began on October 14, 1997. Filming took place in & around the city of New York.
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.

Alternate ending
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.

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Reception

Box office

The film 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.[4]

Critical response

The film received mixed reviews from critics: Stephen Holden of The New York Times called it a
"skillfully plotted update of Frederick Knott's play".[5] Owen Glelberman 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."[6] 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."[7] 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."[8]
Roger Ebert, who gave the film 3 stars out of 4, wrote "[It] works like a nasty little machine to keep us
involved and disturbed; my attention never strayed".[9] 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."[10] A Perfect
Murder holds a 57% "Rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 53 reviews[11] and a score of 50/100,
based on 22 reviews ("mixed or average reviews") from Metacritic.[12]

References
1. Patrick-Smith-Kelly (http://www.you-tab.com/tabs/Patrick-Smith-Kelly) Archived (https://web.archive.o
rg/web/20130603032848/http://www.you-tab.com/tabs/Patrick-Smith-Kelly) 2013-06-03 at the
Wayback Machine at you-tab.com, accessed 21 May 2012
2. Douglas, Clark (July 30, 2012). "A Perfect Murder (Blu-ray)" (https://web.archive.org/web/201511271
61208/http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/perfectmurderbluray.php). DVD Verdict. dvdverdict.com.
Archived from the original (http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/perfectmurderbluray.php) on 27
November 2015. Retrieved 10 November 2015.
3. "A Perfect Murder [Blu-ray]" (https://www.amazon.ca/A-Perfect-Murder-Blu-ray-Bilingual/dp/B008N8
A3EY). Amazon.ca. amazon.ca. Retrieved 10 November 2015.
4. A Perfect Murder (https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=perfectmurder.htm) at Box Office Mojo
5. Holden, Stephen (5 June 1998). "Film Review - A Perfect Murder" (https://www.nytimes.com/1998/0
6/05/movies/film-review-perfect-plan-kill-my-wife-please.html). New York Times. Retrieved 2 January
2017.
6. Glelberman, Owen (5 June 1998). "A Perfect Murder" (https://ew.com/article/1998/06/05/perfect-mur
der/). Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 31 August 2020.
7. Kempley, Rita (5 June 1998). " 'A Perfect Murder': Dial M for Mediocre" (https://www.washingtonpost.
com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/perfectmurderkempley.htm). The Washington Post.
Retrieved 31 August 2020.

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8. Clinton, Paul (4 June 1998). "CNN - Review: 'A Perfect Murder' full of flaws - June 4, 1998" (http://edi
tion.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/Movies/9806/04/perfect.murder.review/index.html). CNN. Retrieved
31 August 2020.
9. "Roger Ebert Reviews - A Perfect Murder" (http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID
=/19980605/REVIEWS/806050301/1023). SunTimes.com.
10. "James Berardinelli Reviews - A Perfect Murder" (http://preview.reelviews.net/movies/p/perfect_murd
er.html). ReelViews.net.
11. "A Perfect Murder" (https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1083171-perfect_murder). Rotten Tomatoes.
12. "Film Review - A Perfect Murder" (http://www.metacritic.com/movie/a-perfect-murder). Metacritic.

External links
A Perfect Murder (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120787/) on IMDb
A Perfect Murder (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/a-perfect-murder) at Metacritic
A Perfect Murder (https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/327368/enwp) at the TCM Movie Database
A Perfect Murder (https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=perfectmurder.htm) at Box Office Mojo
A Perfect Murder (https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1083171-perfect_murder) at Rotten Tomatoes

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