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A Perfect Murder is a 1998 thriller film starring Michael Douglas, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Viggo Mortensen. It's a remake of the 1954 Hitchcock film Dial M For Murder.

Steven Taylor is a Wall Street hedge fund manager who has risen his way through riches. He has a faithful wife named Emily. However, unknown to him, she isn't a faithful wife as she is having an affair with a poor artist, David Shaw, and plans to leave him.

Upon discovering the affair, Steven confonts David and exposes him as a con-artist after his and Emily's money, but offers to pay him a substantial amount of money anyway....in exchange for killing his wife.

Tropes included:

• Bilingual Bonus/Cunning Linguist: Emily is a translator at the UN and fluent in numerous languages. This pays off when she's able to forge a personal connection with one of the detectives assisting her—asking about the welfare of his wife and children—leading him to put in the extra effort to look after her. Later in the film, as she ventures into an inner-city neighborhood, her perfect Spanish similarly impresses the local hoodlums.
• Deleted Scene: The original ending was that Emily shoots Steven after finding out what he did. His dying words are that the police would know, so she fakes a struggle, and she ends up committing the perfect murder.
• May-December Romance: Then 25/26 year-old Gywneth Paltrow, with then 54 year old Michael Douglas.
• Modesty Bedsheet
• Plethora Of Mistakes
• Thanatos Gambit
• Third Act Stupidity
• Xanatos Speed Chess

The Alphabet Killer

Mystery And Detective Films

The Big Sleep

The Pentagon Wars

Films of the 1990s

Peter Benchley's Creature