The Talented Mr. Ripley

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/movies/titles/talented_mr_ripley/click.php?review=47


Rated [R], 140 minutes
Starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Cate Blanchett,
        Philip Seymour Hoffman
Based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith
Screenplay and Directed by Anthony Minghella
website: www.talentedmrripley.com


IN SHORT: The only thing missing is the McGuffin

Film buffs already know from that "in short" line what is coming
next, for Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley may be the
best Alfred Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made. The source
material is a novel by the late Patricia Highsmith; an earlier
novel was adapted for Hitch's Strangers on a Train.

Everything that we could take for granted in a Hitchcock-type
wannabe flick (and Brian DePalma has made lots of those) is here:
mistaken identities, murder, an incredible amount of sexual
tension and ordinary people dwarfed by imposing settings. The
Talented Mr. Ripley luxuriates in all of this. It is wrapped in
50s jazz; the hot sounds of Bird and Dizzy in the night clubs;
the cool, smoky, asexual sound of Chet Baker's vocals on My Funny
Valentine. The settings take you up and down the Italian coast,
the stomping ground of the blueblood kidlets who would be called
the Jet Set just a few years on. Watching Ripley is like wrapping
yourself in silk, until you wonder what that scratchy feeling is
and discover in horror that. . .

In the year 1958, meet Herbert Richard Greenleaf I (James Rebhorn),
his wife Emily (Lisa Eichorn) is wheelchair bound and his son
"Dickie" if off gallivanting in Italy with his girlfriend Marge
Sherwood (Gwyneth Paltrow). At a recital in a Park Avenue salon,
Mr. Greenleaf meets Tom Ripley (Matt Damon), wearing a Princeton
jacket, who is just the right age to have been at that school at
the same time as Dickie. Greenleaf offers Ripley a "job". He is to
go to Italy, expenses paid, and convince Dickie to return to the
States and take his rightful place at his father's side. There's a
$1000 payment in it if he succeeds.

Unknown to the senior Greenleaf is the fact that Tom Ripley is a
bathroom attendant at a Manhattan theater. He lives in a basement
apartment underneath an industrial strength butcher in New York's
meat packing district. His only talents, aside from the ability to
play piano, are "forging signatures, telling lies and doing
impressions of people" which he admits to Dickie when they meet on
the Italian coast. Ripley has prepared himself well for his
assignment, but finds it is a lot more fun to play the double agent
once he spills the beans, living off his expense money while
clubbing around with his new best friends Dickie and Marge. After
all, the grass is greener on the other side. . .

. . . and Dickie is just so damned cute.

There always was a strong eroticism running through Hitchcock's
work. An off the cuff line by Paltrow's character "It's a good
thing we're not getting married. We'd have to take Tom on the
honeymoon." is about as far as Hitchcock could have gone, but
Minghella is freer today to make the homoerotic elements of
Ripley's attraction to Dickie plain as day. And, no, there is no
gay sex and this is not a gay story. It's a story of a poor man
who creates himself in the image of a rich man and decides he wants
to be the image instead of the reality. In doing so, certain
instincts emerge. The greatest of them all is not sexual, it is
survival. When the senior Greenleaf calls the deal off and Dickie
kicks Tom loose -- calling him a third class leech -- things get
really honest and, as revealed in the teevee spot, bloody.

So here is Tom Ripley, liar, forger and Dickie lookalike carefully
taking on the persona of his former friend. His impersonation goes
so deep that it includes an attraction to Marge, even as the new
"Dickie" does his best to stay away from the haunts of the rich.
Which brings us to two more important characters: Freddie Miles
(Philip Seymour Hoffman), an arrogant and suspicious bon vivant
with a red sports car, a devil may care attitude and a "string of
fiancees" so long it'll be at least a decade if he comes out of
the closet; Meredith Logue (Cate Blanchett) who, like the "Dickie
Greenleaf" she meets coming off the Queen Mary and picking up his
luggage at the "R" section, likes to travel "under her mother's
name". This very rich daughter of a textile magnate, who will date
"Dickie" later in the flick, could be the spoiler in Ripley's
spontaneous identity change. She runs with the same crowd and it
can only be a matter of time before someone figures out that her
"Dickie" and Marge's "Tom" are one and the same. There are other
characters and twists to the plot, both before and after that
eventual meeting. You'll have to discover those for yourself and
watch carefully as the police close in.

The Talented Mr. Ripley is a "thriller" with a capital T.

On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Eight Bucks.
Were Cranky able to set his own price to The Talented Mr. Ripley,
he would have paid...

$7.00 (想知道rank之理由：http://www.crankycritic.com/history.html )
-Highly recommended

A great, adult flick, all across the board. If Chet Baker were
still alive to see how his music is used in this movie, well, the
Chet Baker I knew would just smile.