Movies-TV

One of the best movies I've ever seen!

The story is original, never giving in and over-explaining the plot or direction to the audience. The acting by Damon (especially), Paltrow, and Jude Law was phenomenal. I felt sorry for the main character and feared him at the same time. The twists and turns at the end of the movie and the final scene will remain with me for ever. This is a film that I'll use to compare others of a long time to come. Matt Damon's performance is the one to beat for the 1999 Oscar!The direction and cinematography were fantastic as well. There are scenes is this film where there is no action or dialog but you're still filled with awe at the superb images being projected on the screen.

A SHAKESPEAREAN CRITIQUE

Quoting from the Bard of Avon, "Much Ado About Nothing." I couldhardly stay awake for the first 45 minutes(it felt like hours)and FINALLY after something DID happen, it became a little to doabout something which turned into another yawn. The way theGolden Globes raved about it, I thought I was in for a treat.Notreat-a trick or I got stung. No matter what Damon tried to pulloff, he still looks like a punk. His acting is rigid; his smileis put on. I've seen better murder stories in the old CharlieChan movies. If this film wins the Oscar, a lot of people willhave gotten buckeroos under th

Film good despite flaws.

This film had huge holes in it, and contrivances that kept it from being entirely believable. But I liked it despite these flaws. I wonder how many viewers picked up on the fact that in the last scene they were on the Andrea Doria. This, of course, opens up all sorts of speculations as to the fate of Tom Ripley.

Mr. Ripley's main talent is generating the unlikely.

The film goes on at least 3 deceptions too long. There is no possibility that the house of cards Ripley has constructed could stand nearly this long -- especially since there only seem to be about 50 people in Italy, and the men are all gay or bi-sexual.We are apparently supposed to like Ripley. Why? Even if you overlook his sociopathic tendencies (which everyone does until only moments before their death), he is still a needy leech.

How NOT to make a name for yourself?

Don't let the smiling faces of Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law on the cover fool you. The Talented Mr. Ripley is a disturbing film.

And it's not a "Silence-of-the-Lambs," "what-if-this-really-happened" kind of disturbing, either. This story bothers us because the horrible irony of the concluding scene is both unavoidable and hauntingly logical. We have sympathized, even agreed, with Tom Ripley at each step in his journey. Unrequited envy, hopeless infatuation, and self-loathing are too-common emotions, and although our consciences, unlike Ripley's, may keep us from acting on them, his urges are our own.

We've known a Dickie Greenleaf, a popular, talented go-getter who seems to have everything he wants. We've caught ourselves dressing, speaking, behaving like our idols. We've felt that peculiar blend of lust, jealousy, and admiration that makes us think thoughts we're ashamed of, start sentences we're embarrassed to finish, and cling breathlessly to dreams of "if only" and "someday."

There are moments in this film where Matt Damon and Jude Law are the fiction--Tom Ripley and Dickie Greenleaf have such a REAL relationship on-screen that we feel right along with Ripley the thrill of sharing Dickie's laughter... the ache of admiring his beauty unnoticed... the sting of his fickle rejection. Paltrow, too, as the woman who has what Ripley wants but wants what Ripley has, is spellbindingly real. No one in the film--including Ripley--ever seems completely to know what's going on, and it's that sense of uncertainty perhaps that draws us so close to the characters.

Just what is Mr. Ripley's talent? Watch the film and see what your answer is--my own answer hits a little too close to home.

UNPREDICTABLE!

I can usually figure out how a movie is going to end, but this one stumped me. Very good movie. Had a "disturbed" feeling that lasted all day after watching it. When a movie does that, you know you've seen a good one! Matt Damon shines, Jude Law WONDERFUL! I even liked Paltrow (whom I usually can't stand).

THIS MOVIE IS SCARY

THIS MOVIE SCARED ME. I WATCH ALOT OF HORROR MOVIES, BUT FOR SOME REASON THIS MOVIE IS ONE OF THE SCARIEST MOVIES I HAVE EVER SEEN. WHEN TOM HIT'S JUDE LAW'S CHARACTER IN THE FACE WITH A OAR. NOW THAT WAS SICK. RENT THIS MOVIE

Horrible

One of the worst movies- EVER. The first 30-60 minutes is decent, but from there on out, it just plain stunk. The plot if pretty much predicable and towards the end it's as implausible as the end of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. My suggestion is to leave after the first hour. If not, you're in for a long, boring rest of the movie, which you could take a nap during and not miss much.

Interesting remake of the classic French Thriller

Whatever you call it (Plein Soleil; Purple Noon; Lust for Evil; Full Sun; or The Talented Mr. Ripley), this is a wonderfully clever thriller. While this remake is beautifully recast in International Minghella Yellow (IMY), I'm still a sucker for Alain Delon as the original, cool killer. Despite his crimes, he remains the protagonist to the end and every time I hope he gets away with it. See Purple Noon and thank Scorsese for the save.

What's wrong with it?

I don't understand how so many people have such a problem with The Talented Mr. Ripley. In my opinion, it's a fantastic film. I thought Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Jude Law gave wonderful performances. It was really really good.

the touching mr.rpley

i know that most of the people who watched this film found it boring and meaningless but personally i found it fascinating tom ripley is a person who needs to be loved and wishes to receive importance that is why he was ready to give dickie his life because he gave him such importance and showed him that he is somebody interesting who is not rejected from the society like tom ripley thought himself to be however dickie who gets bored quickly got bored with tom no sooner and wanted him to go away and ofcourse htis was a great shock for ripley because once again he saw himself as a rejected person and it seems to me that tom ripley can`t hold such shock and frustration of dickie so he kills him . this is actually the charceter of tom ripley he yearns for love and care because he lacks self-confidence, lonely, and belongs to a low social class .---

Less than the sum of the parts

If you add up all the various aspects of this film, it should have been terrific. It had a hot and talented young cast, all of whom gave good to great performances. It had wonderful locations, costumes, props and music. It had an intriguing plot. And yet by the end all I felt was ennui.

This was a case of a director who couldn't induce the full potential out of his various resources. Anthony Minghella does a fine job on the cinematography and choice of beautiful locations in Italy, but his crafting of the story left it predictable and flaccid. This was supposed to be both a character study and a thriller. It was inadequate on both counts.

In a well made character study the viewer will come to understand the motivations of the characters. This film never delivers in this regard. The only character that was well developed was Dickie (Jude Law). Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow) was a mystery, just a hanger on. Meredith (Cate Blanchett) was nothing more than a plot device. But the biggest reason it came up short was because the motivation of Ripley (Matt Damon) was left too ambiguous. Was Ripley a cunning con man orchestrating a grand caper, an inept interloper who bungled his way through a propitious opportunity, a victim of circumstances, an unrequited gay lover who committed a crime of passion and then needed to cover his trail? Take your pick. Minghella doesn't tell the story in a way that makes this clear.

As a thriller, it lacked surprise. Every murder was telegraphed. The private investigator gives Ripley a pass at the end, obviating the need for Ripley to provide some clever explanation for all the inconsistencies. There was not a single twist in the entire film. It had all the intrigue of playing open handed bridge.

For all the raves I've read about Matt Damon's performance, I found it rather uneven. Sometimes he came across as a clever mastermind and at others a wounded puppy. It seemed like he wasn't really sure how to play the character. Again, I put the responsibility for this on Minghella. I'd call it a generally good performance of a difficult character, but not even close to his dynamism in `Good Will Hunting'.

This was a shining moment for Jude Law who gave a career performance as Dickie. He basically stole the show out from under Damon's nose. He endowed his character with exuberance, and a cavalier live-for-today attitude that made him charismatic despite his callousness and irresponsibility. I enjoyed his performance in the unheralded `Music From Another Room' but this one was even better. If he keeps improving like this, he will be a force to be reckoned with.

I rated this film a 6/10 on the strength of Law's performance and the cinematography. The telling of the story fell flat and robbed this film of its real potential.

A Fascinating Study

The most surprising element of this film was, to me, its general unpopularity. Ignoring the to-be-expected minority who didn't actually 'get it' or didn't care to 'get it' or genuinely didn't like it, this is by all accounts a very well-made film. The quality of acting, as someone mentioned, is quite high for the WHOLE cast, and this is rather uncommon in today's movie world. Matt Damon continues to surprise us with his real acting ability, and Paltrow proves that she's got the goods as well. The real highlight, for me, was the adaptation and the tone/message/feel of the film. Minghella has crafted a delightfully beautiful and unsettling work of art. And I have a hunch that this darkness, more than any artistic flaw, is the root of the film unpopularity. I suspect that not only was the film not what many viewers expected, but that it was a very difficult film for many to watch. We've become used to blood, gore, death, drugs, abuse, war, and a host of other tragedies, but how many films dare to look inside and explore the dark core of humanity. Ripley could be any of us, and this is frightening. Minghella has given us deliciously, but frightfully, incisive look at ourselves. Highly recommended, but not to be watched casually.

Beautiful film..finely crafted

A woderous film, greatly under-rated by the Hollywood pundits. Damon and Law are magnificent and the plot flows smoothly with the final conclusion as apt as it is unpredictable. Perfect cinematography and locations to die for.Outstanding

Unsettling

If there were separate categories, I'd give this movie five stars for acting and cinematography, three stars for writing, and one star for how it made me feel. I think I was expecting something more along the lines of Matt Damon's "Bourne" films ... and I got something very different. I don't want to ruin it for anyone who wants to watch the film, but it starts out strange in the sense of mysterious and intriguing, and ends up strange in the sense of weird and kind of grotesque. When I finished watching it, I was left in an odd emotional state: kind of shocked, kind of awed, kind of sick to my stomach, and kind of sad. Like I said, though, the acting and cinematography were amazing.

Wonderful acting....very dissapointing plot

I was very excited to see this movie because I have always been an admirer of Jude Law's work, Gwenneth Pawltrow and Matt Damon are extremely talented as well. But I have to say (with much regret) that in the long run this movie was a big dissapointment for me. The main reason being that I felt that after Tom Ripley had committed his first murder, there was no suspense left in the movie. There was no mystery involved, you know who the killer is, who is killed, and basically every important piece of information in the first half of the movie. Honestly, I found myself badly wanting to turn off the movie during the last forty-five minutes because I didn't care anymore what happened to the characters.

This is a good movie if you just like to watch actors act though. Matt Damon is incredible as Tom Ripley, and manages to truely understand the character, and Jude Law and Gwenneth Paltrow play wonderfully together as Dickie and Marge. But even that was not enough to make this movie a captivating thriller, or even give it some suspense. I tried very hard to enjoy the Talented Mr. Ripley, but in the end I found it a great dissapointment, with a lack of suspense, and all together exceedingly tedious.

Beautifully Done

Well paced, acted and directed. It succeeded in every scene, in making me think what I was supposed to... either siding with Ripley, or against him, marveling how his "talents" do or do not help him.Tough to say much without giving anything away. Excellent filmmaking, Anthony Minghella is another rare talent. Well-worth seeing, a great conversation movie.9/10

How do I give this a negative five stars.

I can't beleive how bad this movie was. It's been a while since I have seen such bad acting and direction. There are few things I regret in life, and watching this movie is one of them. How did Gwyneth ever win an Oscar anyway? People, news flash! SHE CAN'T ACT! And Matt Damon isn't much better. I'm sure this review will get lost among all of the reviews that are giving this movie five stars. All I have to say is that I am very glad I don't know any of the people writing those reviews. If I can save just one person from wasting two hours of their life on this movie, I will be content.

The Purple Noon of Anthony Minghella

As a huge fan of Rene Clement's "Purple Noon" I came to Minghella's version of Patricia Highsmith's story with suspicion and an irrational predisposition to dismiss it. Well, I was wrong. The talented Mr. Minghella perpetrated a magic trick. The film stands on its own as an entertaining, creepy, thoughtful, beautiful to look at piece of film-making. Jude Law throw us for six, we're not suppose to feel attracted to the selfish Dickie Greenleaf, but we do. His scrumptious performance is alluring, seductive. He is a scene stealer of major proportions. In the original, Maurice Ronnet's oily Dickie Greenleaf was a perfect lamb to the slaughter. We don't mourn his death and want the murderous Ripley, as played by Alain Delon, to get away with it. Here, when Jude Law is on the screen that's what we're looking at. We're prepared to forgive him anything and everything. I did believed in Gwyneth Paltrow's qualm, totally. In the original, Marie Laforet played it as a tenuous, unclear little excuse. Gwyneth Paltrow gives us a multi dimensional character and we go through her torment every step of the way. That, presumably, is merit in great part of Minghella's superb screenplay. Other joys are Cate Blanchett and Philip Seymour Hoffman. On the minus side Matt Damon couldn't make me forget Alain Delon. His Ripley is a better written character than Delon's and his performance is top notch, but Delon was breathtaking on the screen. I think than Anthony Minghella was more interested in the inner workings of Ripley's mind that in the pyrotechnics of a implausible plot. Good. The semi confession of Matt Damon about a basement full of secret truths tells us about his pain about his fear. Delon's Ripley is amoral to the hilt. The murder of Dickie in the original is terrifying. It takes forever. As well as the getting rid of Freddy's body. Minghella never show us how Ripley managed to bring a dead body down the stairs. Clement spends a great deal of time with it. Making it enormously suspenseful. But, as I mentioned before we did care about Delon and, maybe, Minghella new that whether Damon got caught or not wasn't that important. All in all I liked the film very much and the biggest lesson from a film fanatic's point of view is: you don't kill your Jude Law half way through a film unless you leave us in the hands of someone who will make us forget him. Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins, remember that?

whatever...

First of all, 2 hours?! I start tracking the elapsed time once a (boring) movie starts. Boredom is usually introduced in the first... 15 minutes or so. Since I'm an insomniac, it is almost impossible for me to fall asleep, but this movie (until the last 10-15 minutes), really slacked me. OK... the first murder was unintentional, the second one was "a must", and the third one was... kind of compulsive? Nothing new. One without identity, focus, defined sexual orientation... A pathological liar, with boyish good looks... etc. The duality of character is captured to some extent: Damon, on one hand looks like a retard (especially with glasses and the idiotic grin) – as psychos often do, and on the other hand, even slightly intellectual. But, something lacks about him. Something "monstrous" (which is a lot). Anyway, at the end of the movie, he is basically just getting started. Even if he gets caught after killing Peter, he's already killed 3 of them, which makes him...? Another serial killer, that "surprisingly fooled them all".I do see the point this movie tried to make, but it turned out quite trivial. The only satisfaction I actually got before the end came, is for watching Philip Seymor Hoffman. I adore that man. Anyone who watched him in MI3 (the scene in the helicopter - to be more specific) knows what I'm talking about.