The Talented Mr. Ripley

Objective Rating (How much merit I think it deserves):
8/10
Subjective Rating (How much I personally like it):
7/10

Real old, I know, real old. 1999 feels like a year ago but it's actually 10 years ago, and that is when this movie was released. I can't quite believe it either, that such a good movie took me this long to watch. I mean, I really should have seen this movie a long time ago. It matched my taste pretty closely. Almost perfectly, in fact, except for a few minor details.

And look at the cast. Yes, just stare at it. Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jack Davenport. All A-listers now, but back then the last part of the list was mostly unknown. This movie used a lot of talents, much of whom are not well-known at the time. The director Anthony Minghella and the producer Sydney Pollack, both of whom recently passed away, are also quite famous in the industry.

The movie's based on the 1955 thriller of the same name, written by Patricia Highsmith. Tom Ripley, a lower-class young man, is mistaken by the rich Greenleaf family to be a graduate of Princeton and a friend of their son Dickie's. They hire Tom to go to Italy and bring Dickie back to the US to run the family business. Dickie is a free, charismatic, spoiled playboy who is living with his beautiful girlfriend Marge and refuses to return home. Tom gets into their lives and pretends to like all the things Dickie likes (jazz, for one). He lives off Dickie and the money he's getting from Dickie's father, and they have some great fun before Dickie gets tired of him and wants to part ways.



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During a confrontation on a boat, Dickie and Tom have a fight. Dickie starts it but Tom finishes it by bashing in Dickie's head in a rage. I don't think he meant it, but after it happens he sinks the boat with the body in it and starts a dangerous game. He goes to another city and starts posing as Dickie while keeping up Tom Ripley's activities, i.e. checking in two hotels in two different names under two appearances to keep up the pretense that Dickie's still alive. He forges Dickie's signature to live off the dead man's ample allowance. Things are going well for a little while before Dickie and his acquaintances arrive at the city at the same time. He has to kill a friend of Dickie's who gets suspicious. This only leads to more complications and the involvement of the police. Marge also arrives at the city, and Tom tells her Dickie refuses to see her and is thinking about dumping her altogether. She gets very upset.

Tom eventually fakes Dickie's suicide note along with a letter addressed to himself under Dickie's name. In the note, "Dickie" confesses having killed his friend and getting depressed. Marge gets very suspicious and increasingly convinced that Tom's the one who killed Dickie, but everyone (including Dickie's father, who comes to Italy to collect his son's body along with a private investigator) thinks it's just hysteria gone off the rockers because of Dickie's death. Every time you are convinced Tom's not gonna get away with it... he does.


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I have to be honest, I went into the movie thinking Tom is going to be a talented murderer. Everything's going to be completely with cold precision, and he would be kind of like Frank Abagnale from "Catch Me If You Can", sliding in and out of identities like a weasel. But Tom isn't like that at all. He's conflicted at all times. He doesn't really want to do the things he does, but he is driven by a yearning to appear respectable, to have money, to live like a millionaire (or a millionaire's son), to be liked by everyone. And when people turn away from him, he is really hurt and forlorn. He longs to be like Dickie, to be Dickie, who's "like a sun" that everyone turns their face to (according to Marge). He is really insecure and knows no other way to attract people beside living and presenting himself extravagantly.

This is a real thriller. There are so many moments when you are so sure everything is falling apart, but it stays miraculously intact. Well-executed tensions. I only wish Tom were a bit colder and less riddled with psychological issues.