by Rich Elias, Jan 19, 1998

A Perfect Murder		The Spanish Prisoner
Rated R 107 Minutes 2 1 /2 Stars		Rated PG 112 Minutes 3 1 /2 Stars

Two new thrillers reveal two different ways filmmakers have taken up the legacy of Alfred Hitchcock. "A Perfect Murder'" inspired by Hitchcock's 1954 movie of Frederick Knott's play "Dial M For Murder" and "The Spanish Prisoner," written and directed by David Mamet.

"A Perfect Murder" is glossier and far more Hollywood than the Mamet movie. Michael Douglas stars as a Wall Street player married to a sophisticated, wealthy heiress (Gwyneth Paltrow). She's a trophy of his success. They're the ideal couple at charity balls, like the one at the Metropolitan Museum where we learn she's been having an affair with a virile young artist (Viggo Mortenson). The husband knows about the affair, uncovers the artist's shady past, and blackmails him into murdering his wife.

Patrick Smith Kelly's screenplay reworks the triangle in Hitchcock's film, turning the lover into the husband's accomplice. It turns out David Shaw (Mortenson) has a few tricks of his own which add more jolts to the story line. Ray Milland, the husband in the Hitchcock version, was a diabolical cad overlaid with polished English veneer; Douglas' character is another Gordon Gecko, the tycoon he played in Oliver Stone's "Wall Street." Making the villain a recognizable contemporary type switches the emphasis from the wife's predicament (in "Dial M" she's convicted of murdering her attacker) to the husband's cunning. The result, unfortunately, is that the two characters occasionally act stupider than they really are. They get smart only when the plot needs somebody to say or think "Aha!"

"Dial M For Murder" was probably the least Hitchcockian of Hitchcock's thrillers. Knott's adaptation of his play doesn't stretch the material. But the story does feature a "Maguffin," Hitchcock's term for an insignificant plot device which turns a story around. (Desdemona's handkerchief in "Othello" was probably the first Maguffin.) In "Dial M" and "Perfect Murder" it's the wife's door key. The 1954 movie shows her trying unsuccessfully to open the apartment on the eve of her scheduled execution for a murder she did not commit. The key becomes, literally, the key to the mystery.

The heroine in "Dial M" was also a recognizable Hitchcock type: an innocent the law thinks is guilty. Hitchcock once said any normal man or woman feels nervous when a policeman walks by. This is the insight behind "Dial M," "The Wrong Man," "North By Northwest" and other classics. The character's unease is our suspense. The 90s update doesn't rely on the law to exculpate the main character. Perhaps we're more cynical about our justice system. Perhaps also three decades of feminist activism have made it politically incorrect for a heroine to depend, as Grace Kelly does in "Dial M," on a male detective to solve her problem.

The point is that "Perfect Murder" is Hitchcock Lite, all outside. Paltrow is wispy glitter without glamour. You don't have to remember Grace Kelly's screen elegance to decide Paltrow looks and is insubstantial, smarter than Kelly's character but acts dumber. Director Andrew Davis ("The Fugitive") brings an action movie mentality to a screenplay which calls for a director who knows how to use suspense as a trap, one of Hitchcock's many gifts.

"The Spanish Prisoner" takes its title from a con game that traps a mark into turning over thousands of dollars to scam artists. Playwright David Mamet's screenplay invents Joe Ross, a brainy type who's devised a "process" that promises to earn his company millions, maybe billions. The process is the Maguffin here; we never know what it is, only that rival corporations around the world will do anything to get it.

Joe, an ex-Boy Scout (he's got a knife that says "Be Prepared"), trusts everyone -- almost. When he figures out that his brainwork is worth money, he starts to push, unsuccessfully, for a readout on what he stands to earn. When everybody hedges, he's ready to fall into a trap. It's sprung when Joe (Campbell Scott) spends the weekend on a business trip to an upscale Caribbean island, where he runs into Jimmy Dell (Steve Martin) as if by accident. There are no accidents in this movie. You'll spend the first half of "Spanish Prisoner" trying to figure out what's going on, the last half -- having figured it out -- watching as Ross catches up with you.

The Hitchcock legacy is apparent in scenes which literally allude to the master's classics, for example, a scene on a carousel which reprises the climax of "Strangers on a Train." This cinematic kow-towing wouldn't be worth noting except that Mamet, as director and screenwriter, gets inside Hitchcock in a way that Davis and Kelly in "Perfect Murder" couldn't even conceive. Hitchcock's abiding theme is the Innocent Imperiled, and "Spanish Prisoner" trowels this on.

"Spanish Prisoner" is Hitchcock from the inside, savvy about the inner workings of Hitchcock classics and extraordinarily adept at using the master's techniques. "Perfect Murder" is Hitchcock from the outside, surfeit with 90's motives laid on what remains a 50's plot line.