http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/entertainment/movies/reviews/talentedmrripleyhowe.htm

By Desson Howe
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 24, 1999


Don't you just loathe the idle rich?

At least in the movies. Hideously affluent, they're usually sipping
champagne when everyone else is scrambling for loose change.
Overprivileged, arrogant and, of course, morally repugnant, they
saunter from Tuscany hotel room to alpine ski resort, speaking in
Italian, French or dolorous irony.

That's why, in the movies (but not real life), they must suffer.
Suffer, suffer, suffer. Pass the wine and angst, Frederick. See you
back in San Remo, Sebastian.

Hey, it's our only revenge. And that desire to see the rich get
theirs informs "The Talented Mr. Ripley," Anthony Minghella's
occasionally enjoyable but usually ridiculous version of the
Patricia Highsmith novel, set in the late 1930s.

Let's line up the rich. Matt Damon is the angelic, psychotic Tom
Ripley. Jude Law plays Dickie Greenleaf, the man with whom Tom
becomes obsessed. And Gwyneth Paltrow completes the marquee casting
as Dickie's forlorn girlfriend, Marge Sherwood.

When the decidedly unwealthy Tom gets a piano-playing gig for the
Manhattan wealthy, he meets Herbert Greenleaf (James Rebhorn).
Because Tom is wearing a borrowed Princeton jacket, Mr. Greenleaf
asks if he knows his son, Dickie.

Tom, who's a compulsive liar and is desperate to belong to this
world, pretends to know him. To cut a long preamble short, Greenleaf
offers Tom $1,000 (that's one thousand bucks in 1936) to go to Italy
and bring Dickie home. The boy's been away for too long. Dad wants
him home.

Tom bones up on jazz (which he knows Dickie loves), then sails first-
class to Italy. Upon arrival, he meets Meredith (Cate Blanchett),
another rich slacker (who does not exist in the book) who will keep
bumping into him throughout the movie, usually when it's most
inconvenient.

Then Tom finds the couple of his dreams: Dickie and Marge, a sort of
apprentice F. Scott Fitzgerald couple, living on money and no
tomorrow. Tom falls in love with something more than Dickie's life:
his identity.

After becoming the couple's constant companion, his obsession gets
more pronounced. He pokes through Dickie's collection of rings. He
mimics the couple's voices. On one occasion, he sniffs Dickie, who's
sleeping next to him on the train.

But as Marge has already learned, Dickie is fickle with everyone. As
soon as he falls in deep friendship with Tom, he discards him. And
Dickie's pal Freddie (Philip Seymour Hoffman) starts intimidating Tom
with nasty innuendo about his true motives.

When Tom's aberrant qualities become more dangerous, the movie loses
its moorings and drifts into a sort of highly polished, implausible
melodrama.

In terms of psychological profundity, it isn't one millimeter deep.
Why anyone does anything seems beyond this movie's powers of
explanation. Damon's Tom is weird, then weirder, then really weird.
End of his story. Paltrow isn't much of anything. And although Law is
persuasive and likable as Dickie, his good looks and edginess could
have really brought life to Tom's character.

If we remember this movie for nothing else, let's toss the acting
wreath to Hoffman as Freddie Miles. Tom may be a strange one. Dickie
may be very odd. But Hoffman's Freddie is the one who produces a real
threat of danger, the real mystique. One wink from him, one strange
twitch of the mouth and we're entranced.


c Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company