Opens December 25, 1999

Just in time for the Oscars, Anthony Minghella has done it again. He has disappointed me utterly and completely with his turgid and uninspired rendition of Patricia Highsmith's Hitchcock-ian novel-turned-film The Talented Mr. Ripley. It's no secret that I wasn't a fan of Minghella's last film, The English Patient, whose helter-skelter story line and hollow characters nearly put me to sleep. Well, it's happened again, folks. Not only did I almost enjoy a nice nap during Ripley, but in the end, I was so angry, I couldn't stop seething for several hours. If you are a fan of the (to my thinking) not-so-divine Mr. M, read on, but be forewarned, there will be plenty of unkind words spewing forth.

Before I start tearing this film apart, I have to explain from whence my venom comes. Highsmith was a highbrow mystery writer, whose work was inventive enough to capture the attention of the master himself Alfred Hitchcock, who adapted the now-classic Strangers on a Train. Highsmith explored some fascinating concepts in her books: The affect of guilt on one's hero, the way a reprehensible character could win over an audience, the concepts of hero worship and the need for friendship. Powerful topics all. Yet, in the hands of Anthony Minghella, the entire plot of The Talented Mr. Ripley plays out like a horribly bad version of a Joseph Losey movie - a suspense film without the suspense that progresses on a slow-burn with no pay-off.

Ripley was a character who Highsmith visited on more than one occasion, so it's clear she was fond, in some twisted way, of his amoral pathology. As such, the reasoning would go, we too should embrace this fellow, despite his nature. In the book, he was disturbingly charming and oddly empathetic, concealing the evil lurking beneath. As written by Minghella, Ripley (Matt Damon) is instead the quintessential wimp, a lower class lost puppy who haplessly agrees to travel to Italy to bring home Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law), the playboy son of a wealthy businessman.

Once enmeshed in Dickie's world, Ripley is quickly taken in by the breezy lifestyle -- and more than a bit enamored of its perfect representative: Dickie. He realizes that he will do anything to hold onto Dickie and his world, even if it means, rather amorphously, "becoming" Dickie. One of the more frustrating issues in the film is the way that Minghella dances around the homosexual element of this story, toying with it but never meeting it face on. It's as if he's saying, hey, this is a big studio movie and that's a taboo subject. The result is a series of awkward and, ironically, un-sexual scenes - such as when Ripley asks a naked Dickie if he can get in his bath - that left the audience tittering in both confusion and discomfort. Thematically, the world here would have been much richer had Minghella just confronted conflicted Ripley's desires and the seeming guilt they engender in him.

There are but a few reasons that this film is at all tolerable. The first and foremost can be summed up in two words: Jude Law. Prior to this film, Law was seen mostly in smaller, independent features, but his charisma and on-screen confidence should soon make him a star. Law exudes such golden boy charm and ease as Dickie that we find it easy to understand Ripley's envy and adoration. Who wouldn't want to capture such a life? Who wouldn't want to be such an exquisite example of a man? In Law's hands, Dickie is charming, suave and sexy, everything Ripley - as the sociopath that he is - should be, but, in Damon's and Minghella's hands, isn't. In fact, when Dickie tells Ripley "sometimes, you can be quite boring," I found that I couldn't agree more. And Ripley isn't the only one. Gwenyth Paltrow and Cate Blanchett are barely in the film - serving as little more than token feminine window dressing when the plot calls for it.

Where Ripley truly starts falling apart is in the second half of the story. Up to the mid-point, I was almost willing concede the film had "three star" potential (which, mind you, isn't necessarily anything to write home about.) The plot is slow, certainly, but I will grant that it has a certain languid charm as Minghella captures the gossamer world of Europe in the jazzy 50's and makes this feel like an old Hollywood movie. That's where my kindness as a reviewer ends, however, because once Ripley does his first "dastardly deed", the plot goes into a nose-dive.

Instead of suspense, the story flounders as Ripley struggles to keep ahead of his amoral acts. Yet, Ripley never seems clever, he just seems desperate. We don't get the sense that what he does, he does to hold on to Dickie's world and to become Dickie, but rather to keep ahead of the police. Our interest in him isn't built on admiration for his intellect, but on Minghella forcing his character down our throats. Ripley is less "talented" than lucky, a fellow who blunders into a perfect world and then finds that violence - at least for a while - can solve his troubles. Indeed, Minghella could take a lesson from Atom Egoyan, whose recent Felicia's Journey is a spectacular example of the subtle shadings that can be given to the sociopath as a main character (not to mention that Bob Hoskins is sheer brilliance in the role).

And, finally, there's the nail in the proverbial coffin. Instead of leaving us with some sort of unique insight into Ripley's tragic fate, Minghella offers us an utterly abrupt ending, which is so sudden and lacking set-up that the entire audience -myself included - gasped in shock and betrayal. As I walked out of the theater, I found myself thinking (quite cruelly, I admit) that, instead of Ripley killing other people, it would have been so much better has he just killed himself and put us all out of his misery.