Ripley's Game
"Ripley is at the center of five novels written by Patricia Highsmith between 1955 and 1991, which have inspired as many movies: Rene Clement's 'Purple Noon' (1960), Wim Wenders' 'The American Friend' (1977), Anthony Minghella's 'The Talented Mr. Ripley' (1999), Liliana Cavani's 'Ripley's Game' (2002), and Roger Spottiswoode's 'Ripley Under Ground' (2004); Ripley was played successively by Alain Delon, Dennis Hopper, Matt Damon, John Malkovich and Barry Pepper." "The first four are splendid movies (based on only two of the novels; the Wenders and the Cavani on Ripley's Game and the Clement and the Minghella on The Talented Mr. Ripley). The fifth I haven't seen. 'Ripley's Game' is without question the best of the four, and John Malkovich is precisely the Tom Ripley I imagine when I read the novels. Malkovich is skilled at depicting the private amusement of sordid characters, but there is no amusement in his Ripley, nor should there be; Ripley has a psychopath's detachment from ordinary human values. Malkovich (and Highsmith) allow him one humanizing touch, a curiosity about why people behave as they do. At the end of the film, when a man saves his life, Ripley can think of only one thing to say to him: 'Why did you do that?'" "Tom Ripley has always been an enigma in the crime fiction genre, because a thief and murderer does not usually get away with his crimes in novel after novel, and seem on most days like a considerate lover and a good neighbor. Malkovich's philosophical Ripley is closest to Highsmith's character in the way he objectifies his actions. Why is he requested to kill a man? 'Because I can.' He arranges for the man who insulted him, a family man dying of leukemia, to be offered $100,000 to commit murder. The man asks him why he did that. 'Partly because you could. Partly because you insulted me. But mostly because that's how the game is played.'""If this film had been released as intended in 2002, it would probably have made my 10 best list. Incredibly, it never opened theatrically in the United States; it finally turned up on cable in late 2003. It's said that its distributor, the Fine Line imprint of New Line, was so overwhelmed by the studio's 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy that staff couldn't be spared to focus on it. What American audiences lost was one of Malkovich's most brilliant and insidious performances; a study in evil that teases the delicate line between heartlessness and the faintest glimmers of feeling. When Ripley smiles in the last shot, he hasn't lost his credentials as a psychopath, but he has at last found something in human nature capable of surprising and even (can it be?) delighting him." ---------------- Roger Ebert Curator's Comments: Read Roger Ebert's essay on this DVD Classic. Director: Liliana Cavani Country: U.S.A.
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