The Talented Mr. Ripley

Matt Damon plays Tom Ripley. A poor man living in New York who is sent by a millionaire ship-builder to recover his flamboyant son in beautiful Italy. Ripley is, from the very beginning, a fake. A man who lies about virtually everything and puts his master impersonation/forgery skills to good use.

When he arrives in Italy he quickly finds the outlandish son played superbly by Jude Law. He becomes friends with him and his girlfriend (Gwyneth Paltrow) and before long is living out a fantasy life in Italy.

It becomes apparent about half way through this movie that Tom Ripley is a genuinly twisted man who is willing to do anything to keep his auspicious position. This includes numerous murders, deception and total cleverness.

The Talented Mr. Ripley is quite shocking in the sense that the villain eventually prevails. There are some great suspense scenes along the way and the acting is all first class. Damon turns in a spine tingling performance that easily outshines his other great acting job in "Good Will Hunting." In that film he played a kind of hooligan genius, in "Mr. Ripley" he is an utterly sinister genius that is far more affecting. Jude Law got an Oscar nomination for his performance. He's not that good (he was better in Gattaca) but he still does a decent job as the debonaire, spoiled brat. Paltrow is fine and Philip Seymour Hoffman turns in another great (yet unnoticed) performance as a lethargic, pretensious rich kid.

Minguella does a wonderful job of keeping the story moving. "The Talented Mr. Ripley" sometimes risks collapsing under its own weight but Minguella knows what he is doing when holding the two and a half hour film together.

"The Talented Mr. Ripley" is a sinister masterpiece. It reaches back into the past with a very film-noir approach which is both welcome and appreciated in the current sad-state of Hollywood filmaking. Appreciate the film for what it is and don't be too alarmed by the fact that the villain is the character that you are forced to sympathize with. "Mr. Ripley" is different and should be embraced for this, not condemned by people who want the usual Hollywood formula movie. If you want to watch run of the mill Hollywood fluff, watch the "Cider House Rules." If you want evil genius watch "Ripley."


A thriller with minor flaws, but worth buying   May 15, 2000
David Tepper (Virginia, USA)
25 out of 33 found this review helpful

Truth may fall by the wayside in Anthony Minghella's adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel, but beauty-- particularly the odd aspects of America's class system that are based on beauty-- is everywhere. The film itself is beautiful, taking in the nearly-naked Italians and Americans littering the beaches, the smoky and sexy jazz clubs, and the spectacles of Rome and Venice as a backdrop for the evil goings on (another reviewer has aptly called the style "travel-mag porn").

Into this care-free world of rich American expatriates in Italy comes the conniving Tom Ripley (Matt Damon), looking nerdy and pale. Posing as a friend of rich boy Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law), he manages to insinuate himself into the lives of Dickie and his fiancee Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow, ever the Miramax Girl). The fun and games quickly turn deadly, and soon Tom, an utterly amoral cad, must stay one step ahead of the police, Marge, and Dickie's father, shifting between identities and trying to keep a fragile structure of lies from collapsing.

The movie's pacing actually improves on that of the book. Patricia Highsmith's writing style can be sometimes awkward, and Minghella has mostly done away with the worst of her excesses. However, the movie is still not quite tight enough; 20 or 30 minutes could be safely chopped from the film.

More problematic to Minghella's screenplay is his making Tom overtly gay, shouting out what Highsmith knew she only needed to hint at. Simply put, Tom is so incapable of love and so chameleonic that making him gay and in love with Dickie is entirely wrong for his character. Tom certainly loves Dickie's life, and would take advantage of any sexual situation he could manipulate for his own ends, but Tom is so lacking in moral structure that he should be beyond any kind of sexual definition. So, minus one star for Minghella's bad misreading of Tom as a character.

But this movie still earns its other four stars for its hard look at how the U.S. classes its people not only into have and have-nots, but into the charismatic and the drab. Dickie and Marge treat their wealth and prettiness as birthrights, alternately accepting Tom's adoration and treating him with casual, almost unknowing contempt.

And if the scenery and themes weren't enough, the souped-up jazz soundtrack is marvelous, and Jude Law and Matt Damon can actually sing. Just a terrific work by cast, director, and cinematographers all around; if only Minghella as screenwriter had reined himself in a bit, this would easily get five stars.


Flawed Beauty   June 16, 2000
James Chong (Los Angeles, CA)
18 out of 31 found this review helpful

Evidence of the Oscar-winning talent that constitutes director Anthony "The English Patient" Minghella's crew is splattered all over this sumptuous film. Once again, Minghella, aided immensely by his director of photography, John Seale, showcases his gift for cinematically recreating specific times and places with a painstaking exactitude of detail and an unparalleled richness. As we follow Tom Ripley (played by an almost emaciated Matt Damon) from his humdrum New York existence to the golden beaches of 1950's Italy, we easily allow ourselves to be lost in Minghella's stunning world of bronzed and beautiful Italian natives and the fair-skinned American trust-fund-babies that saunter about their shores. Minghella makes it very easy for us to understand how and why a young man like Tom Ripley, who comes from a thankless blue-collar background, could allow himself to be seduced by the idle ways of these idle rich. And, indeed, it is during the first hour of The Talented Mr. Ripley that the film is on its most sure footing. It is during this time that we are introduced to a fascinating array of characters, ranging from the charming and gorgeous Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law), to his beautiful blonde-haired socialite girlfriend Marge Sherwood, to the adorably aloof Meredith Logue (Cate Blanchett), and, of course, to the spoiled and obnoxious Freddie Miles (a minor role played deliciously by the excellent-as-usual Philip Seymour Hoffman).

However, this film's fatal flaw is that it suddenly shifts gears at the halfway point, and the story just as quickly loses confidence in where it is supposed to go next. Indeed, it almost seems as if Minghella devoted so much attention to setting up this incredible world with its incredible characters that he had little energy left to devote to the crux of Patricia Highsmith's novel, which concerns a poor young outsider who violently subverts the well-to-do world that he discovers he can never truly be a part of; but he does all of this (and this is important, for it is where Minghella's interpretation fails) out of an envious fury that the audience is supposed to be able to relate to, a fury spawned by the deeper ills that come from class division and prejudice. In other words, the audience is supposed to delight in Ripley's brutal killings, even if we are simultaneously appalled by them. We are supposed to be able to root for Tom Ripley, the underdog, much as we find ourselves oddly rooting for the Patrick Bateman character in Mary Harron's American Psycho precisely because we understand his fury at being stuck in the uniquely American web of shallow consumerism, commercial brainwashing, and material greed. Instead of developing Tom Ripley in a way that will allow his modern audience to relate to his rash actions, Minghella makes the mistake of trying to cater to a contemporary sensibility by making explicit Ripley's homosexuality, which was only hinted at in Highsmith's novel. Thus, much of the fascination with the character of Tom Ripley in the book is lost in the movie, and we often find ourselves laughing at this pathetic wretch with his silly lustful infatuation than sympathizing with him.

Even on a structural level, the film's second half fails. Once Ripley commits his first and most important murder, the languid but alluring pace of the first half of the film suddenly gives way to a dizzying flurry of jumbled events, with Ripley stumbling upon one sloppy murder after another until the very end, when Minghella basically just cuts the film short and decides to end it. Even those that greatly admire this film must acknowledge the abruptness of its conclusion, which is meant to be profound -- with Tom Ripley sitting alone, fresh off of another kill, his fractured reflection bouncing off of a mirror and revealing his cracked and empty soul -- but is really just a fancy end to a very sudden chain of events that leaves the audience reeling and, ultimately, unimpressed.

Still, Minghella's latest film is very much worth watching if just as a showcase for his superb ability to transport his audience to an intricately, lovingly fabricated world. And that alone is a commendable achievement by any filmmaker.