Ripley's Game
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Movie Reviews of Ripley's Game
Movie Review: Uneven and tedious.
Summary: 2 Stars
It's no great surprise that this film sat on the shelf for two years before going straight to video all over the world. John Malkovich's particular brand of reptilian charm is perfectly suited to the role of Tom Ripley and it's a pity to think of what he could have done with the same character had he been given a decent film to work with.
Dougray Scott (always great) and Lena Headey have real chemistry and intensity together as well, but they're all let down by a script that feels like a rough first draft and by direction that lacks any confidence.
The film veers wildly from light drama to clumsily staged action to brutal violence to black comedy -- mostly a series of groan-inducing one-liners after Ripley kills people. There's very little energy driving the thing as it lumbers from scene to scene, and it was quite a chore to sit through the whole film.
Perhaps my largest complaint is that the characters have no inner life. After the fascinating psychological exploration of Tom Ripley offered in Minghella's "The Talented Mr. Ripley," this film doesn't even try to let us inside his mind.
The narrative focus is not really on Ripley anyway, but on Dougray Scott's everyman. He, too, remains uninvolving, in spite of Scott's committed performance, because we're not allowed into his feelings either.
There are a laundry list of things Scott's character goes through that are never explored. He's dying of Leukemia, yet this is barely more than a plot point. He is an ordinary man, who decides to commit a murder for money for his family, yet he needs only a brief moment of consideration onscreen to make this life-altering decision.
Later, when he learns that his bland neighbor Ripley is actually a ruthless murderer and proceeds to help him to do away with three men, he barely even bats an eye. And again, when his wife learns what he's been doing and decides to take their son and leave him, he seems only mildly perturbed.
Where is any sense of who this man is? If only the film had let us understand either of these characters it might have been worthwhile.
The locations in Berlin and around Italy are certainly pretty and moodily photographed, and master composer Ennio Morricone tries to tie the disparate elements of the film together with an effective score which is often vastly better than the film. Given the weak script, however the assembled talent had a hopeless task before them.
Movie Review: Great acting but gore replaces suspense
Summary: 2 Stars
Of course it's begging for comparison with Strangers on a Train, given that both are based on a Patricia Highsmith novel and both involve a similar "bring an innocent man into the realm of the killer" scenario. But unlike Strangers, this film doesn't have much suspense. A big scene, in which the "innocent" man's wife learns more than we want her to know, is passed over way too quickly. This was basically the emotional climax of the film and it just zipped by. Hitchcock would have understood that it, not any shootout, was the film's big moment and would have lingered accordingly. However, Malcovitch and everyone else does a great job and Italy is beautiful. So if you can stand the gore, you may enjoy it as a rental, but it's no must-have.Movie Review: well done but totally implausible
Summary: 2 Stars
That is it in a nutshell. More than acting, beautiful filming and style were required to make a better movie. I kept thinking how the movie could have been improved. But the sheer implausibility of every component of the movie right up to the last scene in which the final murders occured prevent this movie from coming together in a meaningful way.
Consequently it is just a stream of events and characters not without interest but ultimately superficial.
Movie Review: Even though I'm his biggest fan...
Summary: 2 Stars
John Malkovich is creepy enough when he's NOT brutally murdering people. This movie is b-o-r-i-n-g.Movie Review: This Was Just Terrible....
Summary: 1 Stars
I don't even know what to say. How this got such great reviews is beyond me. And it's not even just that it's so pale in comparison to the Matt Damon/ Jude Law film. This movie is terrible in and of itself.
First of all there's the cinematography that looks like it belongs on tv, scratch that, on tv in the 80s.
Then Ennio Morricone's score that sounds like a B horror movie. (And I'd like to state here that Morricone always disappoints I don't understand how he managed to write the haunting score to the Mission, which is surely one of the best in movie history, as every other soundtrack I've heard by him is just [...]) It's better to have no music and than bad music and this movie should have opted for plan B.
I feel that cinematography and music are among most important aspects of movie, not because they make a movie good, but because they can soooooo easily destroy a movie that would be good otherwise. If these two things are screwed up the only thing that can save the movie is the best script and actors money can buy. This movie has neither. I've never seen such over acting outside of a melodrama and as for the script, sometimes I thought it was going for a comedy and missed. To be honest I can't even imagine Patrica's original novel could have been any good in the first place as the plot is so silly.
At the start I said I don't know what to say and I've said a lot but really I think I could say it best by pointing out the fact the Mystery Science Theater 3000 has often featured better movies than this failure.