Initially conceived as a clever play by Frederick Knott, Dial M For Murder is probably best-known as the source for the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock film of the same name. Its latest version, the loose remake A Perfect Murder, is unlikely to change that. If you have to follow in the footsteps of Hitchcock, remaking Dial M For Murder is not a bad choice. An entertaining film but not much more, Hitchcock's Dial M is notable mainly for the presence of Grace Kelly and a great villainous performance by Ray Milland. This time around, Michael Douglas' cartoonish take on the same character fails to surpass it, and though she's given a meatier role than Kelly's, Gwyneth Paltrow just looks bored. Douglas plays a wealthy, controlling husband who decides to kill his wealthier, adulterous wife (Paltrow), who is having an affair with marble-mouthed, boho artist Viggo Mortensen. A Perfect Murder parts ways with its source by making Mortensen the man Douglas hires/blackmails to do the deed, which ought to create all sorts of psychological/sexual/dramatic tension, but doesn't. Andrew Davis (The Fugitive, Steal Big Steal Little) has made a technically competent thriller that's not only thrill-less, but dull. A Perfect Murder might be passable as a Lifetime-style woman-in-peril movie, but as anything else, it just doesn't cut it.