Sweden obviously wanted to take advantage of
featuring Stellan on their DVD cover.

IMAGES:
REVIEW:
Janet Maslin, NY Times:
Flaming pastels, singsong delivery, facetiously broad acting and
jangling musical numbers are among the things that have long made
Indian popular cinema an acquired taste for Western audiences. But
''The Perfect Murder,'' which opens today at the Angelika Film
Center, is a bustling and touristy, if somewhat overeager, attempt
to bridge the gulf. Conceived as a colorful export, ''The Perfect
Murder'' is based on a 1964 mystery novel by H. R. F. Keating, who
began writing about a character named Inspector Ghote 10 years
before he ever visited India himself. Inspector Ghote, for all his
Indian habits, is essentially a Western invention, complete with
overbearing boss and comically nagging wife.
Although the murder case he tackles here would
never hold the interest of a Poirot or Miss Marple, and although its
solution is far from dazzling, the mystery plot does serve as a
pretext for touring Bombay and introducing a polite, personable
hero. Investigating the near murder of an elderly man named Mr.
Perfect - such is the title's weak humor -brings the Inspector (Naseeruddin
Shah) and a visiting Swedish colleague (Stellan Skarsgard) all over
town.
They encounter a bull with bright orange-painted
horns and magical powers; they visit a film studio and watch the
mahurat, a religious ceremony observed when the film makers begin
work on a new project. They meet a star named Miss Twinkle, who
wears a lot of glitter, and they celebrate the arrival of a monsoon
that actually helps to resolve the case. On two different occasions,
the inspector's exploits lead other characters to be doused with
brightly colored buckets of dye.
The direction by Zafar Hai, who wrote the
screenplay with Mr. Keating, is consistently genial, if mild. And
it's clear from the ''Vertigo'' and ''Spellbound'' posters on view
in one scene that Mr. Hai's heart is in the right place. But ''The
Perfect Murder'' is as plagued by overacting as Bombay is by
overcrowding, and the film's cultural roots are more than a little
confused.