The Right Temptation 2000

Derian McCall, a former police officer who hands in her badge and, with a colleague, opens a detective agency, finds her quiet new life disrupted when Anthea Farrow-Smith, the wife of a wealthy investor, asks her to test her husband’s fidelity. Anthea suggests using Derian as bait to uncover whether the husband is unfaithful, setting the stage for a tense and dangerous arrangement.

Derian bumps into Michael Farrow-Smith at a racket-ball club, where she also nabs his Rolex watch and later returns it at his office. He invites her for a drink, and she shares that she used to be a vice cop who worked undercover but now handles insurance claims. He explains that he is married and wants to avoid giving the wrong impression, insisting he isn’t a cheater.

Anthea claims she wants Michael’s affairs investigated because she fears for her life, alleging that his business dealings involve high-risk transactions and that he can be violent at times. She paints a picture of danger, suggesting that staying any longer could be deadly.

One night, Derian wakes to find someone rummaging through her papers. The intruder overpowers her, but her pet pig intervenes, and she stabs the intruder, who manages to escape before the police arrive to take her statement. The sense that someone is watching her moves deeper into the mystery.

Michael and Derian share another drink, and he confesses that he can’t stop thinking about her. He proposes hiring Derian as a detective to tail Anthea, claiming he’s in an empty marriage and that Anthea might be seeing someone else. The idea of a paid pursuit pulls Derian further into a web of secrets.

To follow Anthea, Derian enlists a photographer named Travis, who captures photographs of Anthea meeting with a mysterious man in his apartment. When Derian confronts Anthea about the photos, their relationship ends in separation, but the clues keep piling up.

Travis phones Derian with new information about the man in the photos, but is killed before he can reveal more. Anthea, meanwhile, calls Derian claiming that Michael may kill her, insisting she once went up to his office carrying a gun and fired at the ceiling while the target was apparently upstairs. Derian heads upstairs with the impression that something lethal is unfolding, only to find a dead body on the bed and herself arrested as the prime suspect in Michael’s murder. As she is led away in handcuffs, Anthea smiles evilly from a distance, a chilling moment that hints at deeper plots.

Falco visits Derian in jail and recalls that Travis had called her with new information. Based on a photo, Derian infers that the man in the image bore a shoulder cut and was likely the intruder who attacked her home. Her deduction hints that Michael may have faked his own death to run away with Anthea, turning the case on its head.

Anthea is arrested as a material witness to a homicide while boarding a flight under the alias Alice Jones, signaling that she may have been part of a larger conspiracy. Meanwhile, Michael returns to his office, opens a safe, and, in a moment of unsettling honesty, tells Derian he loves her and that no one intended for anyone to get hurt. When he turns with a gun, Derian shoots him, and he falls from the office to land atop a car, sealing a volatile chain of betrayals and shifting loyalties to an explosive conclusion.