Ripley's Game
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Movie Reviews of Ripley's Game
Movie Review: good movie, worth a watch or two
Summary: 5 Stars
John Malkovich plays a really good bad guy. It was an older movie for him and Winstone. Both did their roles well as did Dougray Scott.
This movie was worth the watch. i don't know if i would buy it, but i think i would see it again.
Movie Review: "I chose you because I could"
Summary: 4 Stars
For some reason I've never been able to stand John Malkovich. He always imbues his characters with a stuffy, self-importance, and a kind of self-aggrandizement complete with an overblown plumy accent. So I approached Ripley's Game with hesitation; I just wasn't sure if I could even watch it. Well, the good news is that this film version - while admittedly looking more like a made for television movie - is far better than the previous Ripley outing, the tepid Talented Mr. Ripley that starred a "not quite right" Matt Damon.
For some reason, Ripley's Game never got the theatrical release in the US it deserved, although it did do good business in Europe. Admittingly, the film lacks the star wattage of its predecessor, but it certainly makes up for this by finally giving us a "real" Ripley, a Ripley that we can care about, and also an actor who seems to fit the part. Malkovich plays him as a snaky, smooth, elegant and charming middle-aged man, a Machiavellian character who is always in the background deviously pulling the strings.
You can rest assured that this Ripley can kill a man without a moment's hesitation and then stop to admire an expensive statue before making his getaway or even send his girlfriend a beautiful bouquet of red roses. It's not just that this Ripley is a talented murderer - he can also deftly manipulate the innocent and cleverly handle public insults at a party - walking away, of course, with the upper hand.
Having made a fortune ripping off fine art, Ripley is now living the high-life in a stylish Italian manor with a beautiful young pianist for a wife (Chiara Caselli). When Ripley's uncivilized former partner Reeves (Ray Winstone) arrives on the scene three years later and asks Ripley to help him carry out an assassination, Ripley suggests Jonathan Trevanny (a terrific Dougray Scott). Jonathan is a tortured soul who has just found out that he's dying of leukemia. He's also desperately in need of money to support his wife ... and young son.
Jonathan is an innocent, law-abiding sort of guy, and he's initially disgusted with the murderous proposition. But seducing innocent people is Ripley's specialty, so it is not long before Jonathan becomes entangled with an assortment of creepy individuals, including the Russian Mafioso. Obviously, we're disgusted by Ripley, and shocked at how he manages to act as the Devil toward Scott, offering him temptations he can't pass up and slyly looking on at the process of his conscience being eaten away.
The film's best and most exciting sequence is when Jonathan bumps into Ripley on a train and they are forced to use a garrote in the confines of the bathroom. Ripley is slick and smart, but maybe he has he met his nemesis in the uncouth and crude Reeves, who has made it perfectly obvious that he's out for blood. Can Ripley maintain his constant cool and get Jonathan out of the horrifying situation that he's landed himself in?
Italian director-co writer Liliana Cavani frames the story elegantly, making nice use of the settings in both Italy and Berlin, and coaxing understated, shrewd performances out of the cast, particularly Dougray Scott who gives one of his best performances. Although the initial set-up is a little slow, Cavani generally keeps the pacing tight throughout, instilling the proceedings with a gentle stream of black humour and sly wit. The beautiful European locations effortlessly draw us into the events efficiently dressing the action up as though it's art. Murder and mayhem constantly lurks beneath the smooth veneer of money and opulence, the good wine and the classical furniture.
Ripley's Game is certainly not a great movie, but it's one of the best of the series and it's certainly the most exciting. The film is perhaps the only one that has really managed to capture the malevolent psychologically of the complex central character, while also effectively recreating the almost Hitchcockian nature of Patricia Highsmith's original series of books. Mike Leonard August 05.
Movie Review: Malkovich is a natural as the conscience-less Ripley in dark little film
Summary: 4 Stars
Thomas Ripley has been a literary star for years, but got his big Hollywood break in 1999 as Matt Damon portraryed him in "The Talented Mr. Ripley," also starring Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. That film, which was the first in the "Ripley" series, showed how a young, vulnerable Tom Ripley launched his "career" as a murdering con artist. Matt Damon was phenomenal at capturing the desperation of the young criminal genius balancing on the razor's edge and coming to terms with his own dark side.
"Ripley's Game" takes on Tom Ripley at the twilight of his career, and John Malkovich is the perfect casting choice. No longer is Tom Ripley vulnerable, or wondering about exactly who he is. No stolen identies, no phony back-stories, Tom Ripley now lives openly and well as himself, having made his millions, restored a gorgeous villa in the Veneto, and charmed his way into the heart of a nubile harpsichord prodigy (Chiara Caselli). He's still an enigma to his neighbors, all of whom are aware of him but none know him.
A poor picture framer, Jonathan (Dougray Scott) makes the misfortune of giving voice to his envy of the rich American millioinaire at a party. Unaware that Ripley is standing behind him, Jonathan complains that Ripley has "restored the soul out of" his villa, and he's the worst kind of American - rich but with no taste. Ripley stars at him with those reptilian eyes, and you can see the wheels of vengeance turning even as Ripley accepts Jonathan's lame apology.
And what revenge! It is an open secret that Jonathan is relatively poor but also has terminal leukemia. Married to the gorgeous Sarah (Lena Headey) and father to a young tyke, Jonathan is furious at fate and desperate to provide for his family after he is gone. So Ripley offers up Jonathan to an oily former colleague, Reeves (Ray Winstone, of "Sexy Beast") who needs a hit man to off a rival. Dangling money and the prospect of the best health care money can buy, Reeves soon has Jonathan committing murder for hire.
All this is a set-up for when things get really interesting after the first murder and things, as things always do, spin out of control. Ripley has to step in to help the floundering Jonathan as the bodies continue to pile up. But what happens as Ripley begins to form an attachment with Jonathan even as he tears Jonathan's life apart?
Malkovich is one of our best actors, and Ripley is a perfect role for him. Nobody can out-do Malkovich when it comes to conveying dark meanings with a simple glance, turn of the head, or innocent question. Beyond droll, beyond laconical . . . Malkovich carves a niche standing among other people, but outside of them. Ripley stares at his enemies as he would an interesting insect, and he stares at his "friends" in much the same way.
A creepy, sexy, violent movie, "Ripley's Game" is not for the faint of heart. There is much less of the [...] undertone that disturbed so many in "The Talented Mr. Ripley," but that's not to say that Ripley has become any more traditional or comforting. He is an amazing, repellent character, and this movie is a wonderful vehicle for him.
Movie Review: Moral Ambiguity Mixed With Garroting...A Fine Combination
Summary: 4 Stars
"Who are you?" asks Jonathan Trevanny (Dougray Scott), who inadvertently insulted Tom Ripley several days ago, and now finds himself in a German train's lavatory with Ripley, two criminals Ripley has garroted and one Trevanny has shot.
"I'm a creation," Ripley (John Malkovich) says. "I'm a gifted improvisor. I lack your conscience. When I was young that troubled me. It no longer does. I don't worry about being caught because I don't believe anyone is watching. The world is not a poorer place because those people are dead. It's one less car in the road. It's a little less noise and menace."
Trevanny, an honest man, a British framer working in a small Italian town, has a wife and child he loves dearly. He also is dying of leukemia. He had invited his neighbor, Ripley, to a birthday party for his young son along with other neighbors and friends. Ripley had made a fortune three years earlier in a forgery scam that included Ripley's bashing to death a fellow who tried to intervene. Now Ripley lives in a large villa he has restored to tasteful grandeur. He shares his life with his young mistress, a talented pianist. He employs the best cook in the region. He prides himself on his taste. At the party he overhears Trevanny say to other neighbors that the trouble with Ripley is too much money and not enough taste. Ripley, an upwardly mobile sociopath, naturally enough resents this and decides to have a bit of fun.
For Trevanny, desperate for money for his family when he dies, Ripley develops a scheme to turn him into an assassin...a person much like Ripley. Things go wrong when one of the victims in the lavatory survives. He and his associates go after Ripley and Trevanny, finally reaching them at Ripley's villa and then at Trevanny's home. The conclusion is violent, decisive and unsettling.
This is a cool, almost dispassionate film. Ripley has his own code and it doesn't involve deep involvement with others. He can be moved to a degree by things that might be imagined as affection or even a kind of friendship, but woe to anyone who would stake his life on Ripley. Ripley is basically an observer who is moved to action only when it suits him. It has suited him to begin a game of corruption involving Trevanny. And Trevanny, for all his honesty and good intentions, is soon corrupted. He doesn't lose our sympathy; after all, he is in a terrible position, poor, with a family and dying. The two people he kills are thorough criminals...but he still killed them, despite his qualms and conscience.
Malkovich and Scott do fine jobs. So does Ray Winstone as a crude and unscrupulous former associate of Ripley who provides the trigger for Ripley's scheme. I liked this movie a lot. It's moral tone is shaky, at best. Good doesn't triumph. Bad doesn't win. There's enough ambiguity to be satisfying.
The DVD picture looks just fine. There are no extras to speak of.
Movie Review: My favorite Ripley adaptation to date, but I couldn't get past the Malkovich factor.
Summary: 4 Stars
Ripley's Game (Liliana Cavani, 2003)
I've been a huge fan of Liliana Cavani's since I first saw The Night Porter, which is solidly on my list of the hundred best movies ever made, but everything about Ripley's Game just didn't sit right with me when I first heard about it. I have to say that I'm not a big fan of either adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley to hit the screen (Minghella's 1999 adaptation with Matt Damon and Purple Noon, Rene Clement's 1960 adaptation), and that factored into it as well. And while John Malkovich is a fine actor, him as Tom Ripley? I was expecting mot to enjoy this all that much, but as it's Cavani, I had to check it out, and I ended up enjoying it more than I thought I would.
Tom Ripley (Malkovich) has grown into a wealthy landowner, continuing his life of fraud and violence on one hand while living the happily-married life of the idle rich on the other. As we open, Reeves (Ray Winstone), an unsavory character from Ripley's past, shows up with a proposal for a contract killing. Ripley doesn't want to get directly involved, so he hatches a plan to get a neighbor of his, Trevanny (Dark Water's Dougray Scott), to do the job. Trevanny is dying, but the extra money could get him an experimental treatment that might prolong his life. Eventually, however, the full breadth of Reeves' plan comes to light, and Ripley realizes Trevanny is in over his head. But when Ripley tries to rectify things, Murphy's law kicks in...
Cavani's script is what makes this work. The three leads are all very good actors, but Cavani really gives them something to sink their teeth into in a way the other Highsmith adaptations I've seen haven't done. I'm still not convinced John Malkovich was the best choice for Ripley (Johnny Depp would have been obvious, but I think Cavani wanted to stay within the time frame of the books--this one takes place seventeen years after The Talented Mr. Ripley, and it's no coincidence that John Malkovich is seventeen years older than Matt Damon), but he does get the right blend of manipulation and horror once everything's out in the open. He's just never struck me as a violent guy, and perhaps my problem with him in this is that I never quite got past the idea that I was watching John Malkovich rather than watching Tim Ripley. That's a minor quibble, though, and this is a solid film that should have gotten much wider release in this country than it did; give it a look. *** ½