Sometimes it’s really worth it to compare remakes of old movies to the originals. Other times it’s not because the two can be like night and day. A Perfect Murder (Gwyneth Paltrow and Michael Douglas) and the original Alfred Hitchcock version (Dial M for Murder) are a good example.
To start with, A Perfect Murder has a totally different run of things in the plot twists and ways of figuring out things. The part of the adulterous wife (played by Gwyneth Paltrow and Grace Kelly, respectively) turns tables almost completely. Emily (Gwyneth Paltrow) is no fool. And she also plays the part of a woman who actually killed someone in the process of protecting herself masterfully. She’s very shaken after the encounter and distraught and hysterical. Afterward, she pretty much reaches her own conclusions…looking into things, beginning to suspect that her husband is up to something…and then she confronts him with what she’s found. Steven (Michael Douglas) pretty much has everything figured out. He knows what to do in every case…he seems to have every base covered. And he’s much more devious and evil than the husband in Dial M.
Dial M for Murder is also very Hitchcockian in its filming and format. Hitchcock tended to like somewhat odd camera shots. Shots from the floor or for the ceiling as if you were spying on the scene. Also, a great many of his movies were first plays so they were written with one major scene and Hitchcock would leave it that way, filming some of the movie in other places, but the majority of it would be in that one main room or apartment or what-have-you. Other good Hitchcock examples of this would include Rope and Lifeboat.
Something that I thought made a good twist in A Perfect Murder was the role of the lover. Instead of hiring through blackmail an old college acquaintance, Emily’s killer-for-hire is driven by money and a criminal background and is, in fact, the man she’s cheating on her husband with (named David). Michael Douglas does his homework and decides that this guy is by far the best candidate for this job as he is greedy and he can blackmail him since he knows of David’s criminal background and could turn him in for a variety of crimes. David pulls a trick on him though and sends someone else to do the dirty work so that he is free to walk away when it doesn’t go right and then use his knowledge to blackmail in turn and still get the money he lusted. Another good twist.
A Perfect Murder is definitely more gruesome than Dial M for Murder, but I think it’s effective more than gory. It’s no battle from Braveheart so don’t concern yourself too much. There’s no dismemberment or anything like that…there’s a lot of blood, but not much else.
I’d definitely recommend A Perfect Murder. Both Paltrow and Douglas give superb life to their roles and I enjoyed the film enough to see it again.
Oh, and as a footnote, you might just want to consider renting Dial M for Murder which is a wonderfully suspenseful, distinctly Hitchcock film and everyone needs to get in one of those every so often.
There are some clear similarities that carry over from one story to the other, but overall I would say that it’s a night and day difference. However each are well-done in their own right and both are more than worth seeing.
