'Ripley' has talent for living in the shadows

http://ae.zip2.com/charlotte/scripts/staticpage.dll?reviewid=145311&only=y&spage=AE/movies/movies_details.htm&id=22897&mwhere=Charlotte+Area&mwhen=sat&ver=e2.7&userid=228195838&userpw=.&uv=7391&uh=228195838,0,

By Robert W. Butler
The Kansas City Star
Published: Friday, Dec. 24, 1999


Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) is a nobody, a young man who says that his
only talents are for forgery, lying and impersonating other people.

He lists those assets with a crooked grin and a boyish twinkle
sparkling behind horn-rimmed glasses, as if to reassure us that he's
only joshing. But is he?

"The Talented Mr. Ripley," director Anthony Minghella's happily
perverse adaptation of the venerable Patricia Highsmith novel, is an
unconventional thriller in that it's far less interested in plot and
thrills than in sifting through Tom's psyche for the elements that
would turn a nice clean-cut kid -- the sort any mother would be happy
to have escort her daughter to the dance -- into a killer.

It's a tricky exercise, for ultimately we're asked to see things
through the killer's eyes, to experience his ambition, his
imagination and his fear as the knot of the law tightens.

For the most part it works, thanks to some very fine performances and
a lush rendering of '50s Italy so tasty you can almost feel the
Mediterranean sun on your skin.

The impoverished Tom finds himself in Europe almost by accident. A
borrowed Princeton blazer has led to a meeting with Mr. Greenleaf, a
wealthy shipbuilder who assumes that as a Princeton man, Tom must
know his son Dickie. Dickie has run away to Italy, ignoring his
responsibility to the family business, and is busily squandering his
inheritance.

Greenleaf proposes that Tom travel to Italy (on Greenleaf's dime, of
course) and coax Dickie into coming back home to New York.

But Tom quickly falls under the spell of Dickie (Jude Law) and his
fiancee Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow), a golden couple whose life of jazz,
surf and lazy sensuality intoxicates the plebeian visitor. Before long
Tom has become a "double agent," sending promising reports back home
while living the high life with his new friends, who are amused by his
banal naivete.

The problem with spoiled people like Dickie, though, is that they
quickly become bored. And Tom is a rather boring sort to begin with.
So when Dickie suggests that their run together has reached its end,
Tom cannot imagine giving up the life he has come to cherish.

Bad things happen.

Curiously "Ripley" is most satisfying in its first hour, when, like
Tom, we're discovering the privileged life of Dickie and Marge and
lolling in the lap of luxury. Once the film starts paying attention
to plot, it ceases to be so seductive. This may be because director
Minghella ("The English Patient") really isn't all that interested in
building tension; he's having more fun mucking about in Tom's banal
yet lethal brain.

In any case, "The Talented Mr. Ripley" slows down just when it should
be picking up steam, what with our "hero" creating for himself a shadow
existence and setting in motion numerous plots designed to keep him
living in the fast lane and free of jail.

There can be no denying, though, that the performances are on the
money. Damon turns in his most complex and satisfying work to date,
playing the tow-headed normalcy of his middle-American looks against
the dark currents of Tom Ripley's twisted mind. What's really
interesting -- and disturbing -- is that his Ripley isn't so much a
conniver with a long-term plan as an innocent who reacts
instantaneously to any threat to his well-being.

Law's Dickie is described at one point as a sun who warms everyone who
falls into his orbit, and that's just the way this handsome bon vivant
is played -- until he's decided you've worn out your welcome.

Paltrow doesn't get to do that much, but she does it well.

To reach Robert W. Butler, movie editor for The Star,
call [phone] or send e-mail to [e-mail]