The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

Directed by Anthony Minghella. Starring Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jack Davenport, Sergio Rubini, James Rebhorn, Philip Baker Hall, Celia Weston. [R]

Second film adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s first Tom Ripley novel (previously filmed as French thriller Plein Soleil in 1960). Damon plays the titular talent, a chameleonic sociopath who insinuates himself into the lives of young American jetsetters staying and traveling in Italy; it’s an example of casting against type, to be sure, but he plays it to a creepy hilt, his open-faced boyishness serving as an unsettling veneer for twisted malevolence. He’s matched by Law’s shallow extravagance and manipulative cruelty in playing the young man that Damon is ostensibly assigned to bring home, yet secretly wants to become. But then the bodies start to pile up… The distastefully amoral atmosphere isn’t always easy to take over the course of its two-and-a-quarter hours (despite all the scenery-for-tourists prettiness), but its characters are fascinating and intelligent, the tension is stretched taut at several junctures, and the dark irony is effective for anyone who can appreciate that kind of “comic relief.” Its one glaring scripting issue—Blanchett’s socialite being so charmed by Damon’s impostor—is an invention from writer/director Minghella (her character wasn’t in the novel). Gabriel Yared composed the gorgeous adagio heard toward the end.

80/100