Overall Rating
  Awesome: 37.86%
Worth A Look: 33.01%
Average: 12.14%
Pretty Bad: 6.31%
Total Crap: 10.68%
12 reviews, 134 user ratings
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| Talented Mr. Ripley, The |
by iF Magazine
"A perfectly-assembled, very mature outing."
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Hey look everybody! The new Matt Damon movie is out. It takes place in Italy in 1958. He’s wearing cool clothes, running around with that hunky Jude Law and that gorgeous Gwyneth Paltrow. She won the Oscar last year for SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE and ARRHGGGGGH! What’s Matty doing? This isn’t some normal drama. This is weird! Blood! Murder! Homos!It’s safe to say THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY is not what most teens are looking for in a holiday picture. In fact, fans of GOOD WILL HUNTING will probably be hunting for the exit about 45 minutes into this taut, engrossing thriller. Which is a damn shame. Writer director Anthony Minghella, with his first film since THE ENGLISH PATIENT, has taken Patricia Highsmith’s cult novel of the same name from 1955 and crafted it into a haunting and disturbing drama that’s one of the best films of the year.
Damon plays Tom Ripley, a wannabe musician in New York who’d really wannabes somebody else altogether. Somebody rich. Somebody suave. Somebody dashing, daring and just like Dickie Greenleaf, the man he’s sent to bring back to the States from Italy. It seems Dickie [Jude Law] is blowing the old man’s fortune, drinking too much and hanging out in sleazy jazz bars. When Damon is mistaken for one of Dickie’s old college classmates, the strange job becomes his mission. But things quickly go awry.
When we first see Ripley ingratiate himself into the fab, carefree world of Dickie, Marge [Gwyneth Paltrow] and Freddie Miles [Philip Seymour Hoffman, in yet another brilliant turn], we understand his attraction to the world these wealthy expatriates live in. The boating, the drinking, the trips to exotic lands. How could anyone resist these dreams of idyllic meandering? So as Ripley reinvents himself into a world that’s well beyond his means, we also expect him to yearn even for Dickie’s girl. And that’s where this thriller takes its unique bend in the road. Because Ripley doesn’t just want to be like Dickie, he really wants to be with Dickie. The film shifts gears several times and to say much more would ruin the surprises. Suffice to say this is engrossing stuff, with Damon putting in the multifaced performance of his career. He’s by turns charming, clever, fast, slow, conniving, chilling, endearing and pathetic. It’s a daring leap that will surprise many.
Throughout the film Minghella makes clever use of the lush Italian locales. Like THE ENGLISH PATIENT the land around the characters becomes a character itself and we’re believably transported to another time, another place. Yet it’s a misleading path. He lulls an audience into thinking they're in for one trip and then quickly changes courses. From the charming way the cast behaves, we half expect a traditional romantic triangle or perhaps a simple morality play. At least that’s the way PURPLE NOON [‘61], the original film adaptation of the novel played out. Alan Delain played Ripley not as confused as much as a scheming charlatan. While that film’s Technicolor wonders are nothing to sniff at, this RIPLEY is far more complex and challenging. Law glides through the part of Dickie, he’s all surface and wit, with something slightly ugly just beneath the surface. As the long suffering girlfriend Paltrow does everything with a part that could have reduced a lesser actress to shrill blandness.The biggest question the film raises is will a spoon fed audience take to this kind of complex entertainment? Damon fans be damned, this is still a disturbing portrait that will leave many viewers cold. Compounding matter, it climaxes with an ambiguous ending that will all but kill the traditional word of mouth. But don’t let that keep you from missing this perfectly assembled, very adult, very mature outing.-- Paul Zimmerman
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link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=3426&reviewer=119
originally posted: 02/24/01 13:49:46
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USA
24-Dec-1999 (R)
DVD: 21-May-2002
UK
N/A
Australia
24-Feb-2000
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