'The Talented Mr Ripley' is a very silly film. It is a perfect example of how style can triumph over substance. From start to finish the plot is 100% nonsense. A geekish lavatory attendant (Tom Ripley/Matt Damon) stands in as an accompanist wearing a borrowed Princeton blazer. This is enough for a shipping magnate in the audience to finance him to go to Italy and bring back his playboy son (Dickie Greenleaf/Jude Law).
Ripley falls in love with Dickie's life and with Dickie himself. For a while he manages to attach himself, leechlike, to the black sheep. His first advances, hinting at a game of nude bathtub chess, are rebuffed. An improbable turning point occurs when the hithertho nerdish Tom slices open the side of Dickie's head with an oar during an unlikely boat trip for two and then beats him to a lifeless pulp in the biffo that follows.
From this point, Ripley leads a double life, as himself and his victim. When rumbled by one of Dickie's old chums (Freddie/Philip Seymour Hoffman) he turns to murder again. The net seems to be closing in but Ripley keeps wriggling free.
Writer/Director Antony Minghella uses the oldest trick in the book to distract viewers from the hollowness of the plot. Just as a skillful conjuror diverts the gaze of the audience from where the trick is really happening, so Minghella disengages our critical faculties with picturesque backdrops of Rome, Venice and even Jude Law's posterior.
The cast do well enough, apart from Matt Damon who wouldn't have got a look in at a 'Queer as Folk' audition. None of the characters they play invite empathy, so the viewer scarcely cares who might live or die, and whether Ripley will get away with his literally incredible double life.
Surely the hard-boiled American private detective hired by Greenleaf Senior will unravel the tissue of lies and coincidences? Nope. Fade to unreadable titles and who cares? The stars of this film are the locations and the art direction. Without them it would be the disaster the absurd and wholly unbelievable plot deserves.
Ripley falls in love with Dickie's life and with Dickie himself. For a while he manages to attach himself, leechlike, to the black sheep. His first advances, hinting at a game of nude bathtub chess, are rebuffed. An improbable turning point occurs when the hithertho nerdish Tom slices open the side of Dickie's head with an oar during an unlikely boat trip for two and then beats him to a lifeless pulp in the biffo that follows.
From this point, Ripley leads a double life, as himself and his victim. When rumbled by one of Dickie's old chums (Freddie/Philip Seymour Hoffman) he turns to murder again. The net seems to be closing in but Ripley keeps wriggling free.
Writer/Director Antony Minghella uses the oldest trick in the book to distract viewers from the hollowness of the plot. Just as a skillful conjuror diverts the gaze of the audience from where the trick is really happening, so Minghella disengages our critical faculties with picturesque backdrops of Rome, Venice and even Jude Law's posterior.
The cast do well enough, apart from Matt Damon who wouldn't have got a look in at a 'Queer as Folk' audition. None of the characters they play invite empathy, so the viewer scarcely cares who might live or die, and whether Ripley will get away with his literally incredible double life.
Surely the hard-boiled American private detective hired by Greenleaf Senior will unravel the tissue of lies and coincidences? Nope. Fade to unreadable titles and who cares? The stars of this film are the locations and the art direction. Without them it would be the disaster the absurd and wholly unbelievable plot deserves.