A Perfect Murder is a 1998 thriller directed by Andrew Davis and starring Michael Douglas, Gwyneth Paltrow and Viggo Mortensen. It is a remake of the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock film Dial M for Murder, though the characters of Halliday and Lesgate are combined. Based on the play by Frederick Knott, the screenplay was written by Patrick Smith Kelly.
Plot summary
Steven Taylor (Michael Douglas) is a Wall Street hedge fund manager who has risen a long way to achieve his riches. His successful investments and speculations allow him to live an extravagant upper-class lifestyle with his beautiful and much younger wife, Emily (Gwyneth Paltrow). Unfortunately for Taylor, his investments are unravelling, and he knows he is going to need his wife's personal fortune to maintain his status and lifestyle. Emily seems like a faithful wife, but in reality, she is having an affair with a penniless painter, David (Viggo Mortensen), and is considering leaving her husband.
Although Emily thinks herself safe, Steven knows everything about the affair, and has also been able to uncover the painter’s dark past. He pays the artist a visit and confronts him with knowledge about the affair and the fact that Steven knows about the artist’s prison time and past con games against rich women. He also sees the wedding ring that Emily left. All seems lost for the artist, until Steven makes him an offer. He is willing to pay $500,000 in cash for the death of his wife. Steven has already laid out a detailed plan, which will supply him with a firm alibi and keep the murder from being traced to his wife’s lover.
Steven tells David he will hide his latchkey outside the service entrance to his apartment. Steven will go out for his regular night out, during which his wife usually stays in and takes a bath. David is to sneak into the flat and, at 10 pm when he phones his wife, kill her by bludgeoning her with a frying pan. Steven goes home and makes preparations, taking the latchkey from his wife's bag and hiding it outside the service entrance as planned. He then convinces his wife to stay in and sets off for his night out.
At 10 pm he phones his wife as planned, and Emily answers the phone. She is then attacked by a masked assailant and fights with him. Finally, she manages to kill the attacker by stabbing him in the neck with a meat thermometer and desperately calls for help.
Steven returns to find his wife alive and the masked killer dead in a pool of his own blood. Before the police arrive, he quickly takes the latchkey from the killer's pocket and puts it back on Emily's keyring.
When police officers remove the mask, however, the killer is not who Steve expected. Before him lies a total stranger, someone who David had hired to do the "dirty work". Later on, Steven takes Emily to her mother's house, and Emily attempts to call David to let him know that she's all right, but David thinks that she's dead. Someone calls again but when David picks up, it is not Emily, but Steven saying "we have something to talk about." They meet on a boat and recap what happened the night before and decide to wait until Steven has thought of what to do next, with David asking, "do I keep fucking your wife in the meantime, or what?"
Meanwhile, Emily tells her mother that she is going to break up with Steven. Then she goes back to the scene of the crime, mysteriously remembering what had happened. Someone walks in on her. It is Steven, saying that she had left the front door wide open. She then tells Steven that she can't stay any longer with him and that she will be staying with her friend. Meanwhile, it is revealed that Steven is in serious financial trouble, and he had planned to kill Emily not only for cheating on him, but also for her money. David later calls Steven and he reveals that he made a tape detailing the whole plan and demands that Steven pay the money.
Steven goes to David's loft to pay him but David is not there; a note is left saying he wants to meet up somewhere else. The phone rings and Steven picks up, thinking it's David, but it's a ticketing agent confirming David's train out of the city. Steven meets David and hands over the money, then disappears. David boards the train out of the city, but when he opens the bathroom door, Steven lunges out and stabs him. While David is dying he reveals that he sent the tape to Emily.
Steven rushes home to try to get the tape—he succeeds before Emily can find it. Thinking that everything is OK he goes and takes a shower. But Emily sees the empty bag next to the safe. She opens the safe and finds the tape that Steven hid in there and listens to it. When Steven gets out she reminds him that she still hasn't found her key (Steven had, without knowing it, placed the key to the killer's apartment on Emily's keychain instead of her own, which he had originally taken and hid for the killer to use to get in). Steven returns to the place where he originally left the key - placed within a small, magnetic container on the underside of some piping - for the killer to find. Steven finds the key, realizing that the killer had put the key back where he had found it after using it to unlock the door. Emily confronts him revealing that she knows everything about his plan and threatens to go public. He attacks her and in the struggle, she picks up a gun and kills him.
The crucial detail in the whole plot is that the killer puts the latchkey back before attempting the murder and not after the planned murder.
Cast
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