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If one is going to remake the works of the great masters of cinema, it isn't a bad idea to remake their lesser creations. In choosing to remake Dial M For Murder, director Andrew Davis sets himself up for unfortunate comparisons to the great Alfred Hitchcock and then crafts his movie in such a way that it deftly sidesteps the issue and any echoes of the original are so far removed from the source that they don't invite comparisons at all. It helps that Hitch's original is not one of the director's best works. In the new version, Michael Douglas is his sleazy best as a husband conniving to murder his young wife for her money and Davis plays up this persona by adding to it an almost subliminal whiff of brimstone. Gwyneth Paltrow is never the helpless victim in this film, as Grace Kelly is in Dial M For Murder, and even as she cheats on her husband with artist/con-man Viggo Mortensen, she is filmed as a blazing white presence amid the dark production design of the movie. It's crude symbolism, but it works. Both performers are better than Ray Milland or Grace Kelly (who Hitchcock filmed in more or less the same manner).

The plot deviates wildly from the original about halfway in and goes off in another direction, which is helpful, and the film as a whole does not suffer from the staginess of the Hitchcock film (in Hitchcock's defense, some of the staginess of his film results from the various props and camera set-ups for the 3-D process). On the whole, it does a creditable job of stepping out of Hitchcock's shadow. But it makes two crucial errors. The first is that it ends with a gunfight. Given the Machiavellian manouvering of each of the characters throughout the movie, the film should have ended with the villain undone and alive, his eyes wide as the cops arrive and he reallizes that he's screwed. As filmed, though, he gets off easy. He is given a quick death instead of the financial collapse and criminal procedings that the rest of the movie sets up. As such, the film cheats the audience of a payoff that is infinitely more satisfying than what they get. Of course, Hitchcock realized exactly this, and the shot of Ray Milland realizing he's screwed is a lot more cathartic than the clumsy fireworks at the conclusion to A Perfect Murder, all of which suggests that even Hitchcock at his dullest is still the match for would-be imitators. Its second error is hubris. Why did the filmmakers assume they could pull off material that one of the greatest filmmakers failed at? Your guess is as good as mine.