Well here's a test screening review by the INCINERATOR, a spy of such worth that even the Hallenbeck and myself are in awe of him/her/it. You have never heard of this spy, but he's actually among the most important, secretive spies I have. And if Farrell knew that he/her/it worked for him, he'd crap. So how is his review? Well it does give away quite a few spoilers in the film, so take that into account. Yes, there are changes from Hitchcock's DIAL M FOR MURDER. But the most important thing the flashpaper dude has to say, is that the film passes the piss test. The common condition where at the beginning of a film, you need to take a leak, but for some insane reason, caused by the hypnotic attraction of the screen, you are glued to your seat, and the urine never flows. Just as Joshua's horn blew the walls of Jericho, it seems that A PERFECT MURDER built a dam between the seat and the rush of urine. Truly a sign of a good movie.
I just returned from a test screening of A Perfect Murder at the United Artists theatres in La Canada. I didn't really know what to expect, I am usually disappointed by most modern thrillers. This movie is a remake of "Dial M for Murder", which I have not seen and therefore can only judge on its own merits and not compare it to the original.
We start off learning that Gwyneth Paltrow's character is in an unhappy marriage to Michael Douglas and is banging Viggo Mortensen on the side. Douglas is a wall street commodities trader (or something like that) and demands control over everything his wife does. Paltrow is an heiress who works at the UN as some kind of translator or office worker (they weren't too clear on what she did exactly, but it wasn't very important to the film). Mortensen plays a starving artist who is trying to get paltrow to leave her husband.
Douglas approaches Mortensen one day and offers him $500,000 to kill his wife. Douglas has known for quite some time that she & Mortensen have been having an affair. He has also dug up all the dirt from Mortensen's past. He isn't really a college educated artist, but a two-time loser con man who specializes in wooing rich women. Mortensen agrees to do so and they go over the details together. Douglas comes home the night it is supposed to happen and finds that his wife is not only alive but has killed her attacker. It isn't Mortensen. It's some ex-con that Mortensen sub-contracted it out to.
Anyway, it gets more and more tangled from there as the wife tries to figure out if the husband had a role in the attempt on her life, the con artist tries to get the rest of the money he was promised for the job and the husband tries to come up with a new plan to off his wife and collect the inheritance (roughly $100,000,000). Michael Douglas looks menacing in every shot and it comes across very nicely. Paltrow's character grows smarter throughout the movie. Mortensen tries to keep the ball in his own court long enough to get his money.
The film is very well written, is very detail- oriented and gives the audiences the payoffs it wants. One of the better aspects of the film is that everything is set up in the first half hour. Most thrillers are very predictable and when they try to have twists, they come across as unbelievable. This film just kept getting more & more interesting. It passed one of the most important tests there is in a movie.
I had been standing in line for an hour to see this thing and had to piss ever since the movie started. But I never got up to go take that piss because there was always something intriguing on screen. I didn't want to miss anything. I don't really have any comments on the technical aspects of the film because I was paying too much attention to what was going on - which is a good thing in my book. Another thing- even though Douglas's character is supposed to be a "bad guy", I started liking him after a while because he was soon turned from predator to prey for the con artist Mortensen.
The film is not brilliant but it is definitely worth paying full admission to see the evening show. I probably left some things out, but what the hell, I'm tired. Later Harry.
Incinerator
