Ripley's Game (2003)

I love this movie so much

hyped garbage

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

If you want an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's "Ripley's Game" in terms of fantasy and fictional characters, very romanticized and unlikely to be true with a photocopied Malkovich's acting already present in his last 100 movies, go see this film with a bourgeois popcorn in one hand and a pompous pseudo-intellectual hollywoodesque far-fetched compliment on the other.If you want the opposite, check out Wim Wender's 1977s masterpiece "Der Amerikanische Freund" (aka. "The American Friend") and delight yourself with the dramatic triangular acting of these extraordinary actors and one of Wim Wender's mentors: the young Bruno Ganz and Dennis Hopper plus a still ferocious Nicholas Ray. Sadly Nicholas Ray dies almost 2 years after but not before co-directing his last film "Lightning Over Water" with his friend Wim Wenders.If you haven't seen it, after you've done it and unless you are in denial, you'll seriously reconsider "Ripley's game".

This movie is more evidence that you're usually better off leaving things alone. The Talented Mr. Ripley was a complex and engrossing tale of an empty young man trying to fill himself and the terrible consequences of that for him and everyone around him. Ripley's Game is a boring and pedestrian "thriller" with an underdeveloped supporting cast and a main character that's lost everything that was interesting about him.Set several decades after the first film, Tom Ripley (John Malkovich) is now a man in middle age. He's rich, has a hot young girlfriend who's accepting of his sociopathic nature and after a lifetime of violence and scheming that's left him with a dubious reputation amongst normal people, Tom seems content and settled in the world. Then an old associate from his criminal past, the crude and bold Reeves (Ray Winstone), asks Tom for his help. Reeves needs some men killed without getting himself implicated. Tom demurs, but decides to see if he can manipulate a local picture-framer into becoming Reeve's assassin. Partly because he thinks the man has it in him. Partly because the man was rude to him at a party. But mostly for Tom's amusement.The picture-framer Jonathan Trevanny (Dougray Scott) has leukemia and after some frankly muddled and uninspired dithering, decides to take Reeve's offer to earn some money for his family. But after helping Jonathan into the darkness, Tom decides he wants to lead him back into the light and pull him out of the world of contract killings. That proves to be more difficult than expected and Tom will have to use all his talents to survive.Ripley's Game is prettily directed by Liliana Cavani and a scene where three people get killed on a train along with a few other brief moments of violence have a raw energy that is absent from everything else in the movie. These characters and situations are shallowly written and there are at least three different occasions when something that makes no sense has to happen in order for the plot to get from one point to another. Once, the film even references that a plot point doesn't make sense and tells the viewer to stop thinking about it. The relationship between Tom and Reeves defies explanation. Jonathan's transformation into a murderer is left completely unexplored except for a 4 minute scene in a public toilet that tries to cover about 45 minutes of character development. The threat Tom and Jonathan face at the end of the story is largely anonymous drones representing an undefined enemy.The worst part of Ripley's Game is that it takes the fascinating and compelling character of Tom Ripley and neuters him. What made him so engaging in the first film was seeing the inner turmoil that drove all of Tom's evil acts and the contrast between Ripley's abnormality and the normal people around him. Middle aged Tom is perfectly at peace with himself and spends a great deal of time consorting with other deviant folks. Shorn of his weaknesses and robbed of distinctiveness, Tom Ripley becomes just another overly written character that functions more as a plot device than a real person.Tom Ripley is a bit like Hannibal Lecter in this respect. When Lecter is imprisoned, it's possible to admire, appreciate and even like him in spite of his evil nature. When Hannibal is set loose and is out and about in the world, you're confronted by how ridiculously, cartoonishly unrealistic the character is. Trapped in his cell, those larger-than-life attributes are implied depths. When he's free, those capacities are revealed in all their melodramatic splendor and you can't take the character as seriously. When you free Tom Ripley from his need to be with other people and his inability to make that work, he becomes a soulless mechanism instead of a relateable human being. It's not John Malkovich's fault that this Tom Ripley is so unengaging. He's just not given the same tools to work with as Matt Damon in the first movie.Both The Talented Mr. Ripley and Ripley's Game are based on novels by Patricia Highsmith. I'm not sure if the flaws of this film reflect weaknesses in Highsmith's writing, but somewhere along the line someone forgot what makes Tom Ripley a worthwhile work of fiction. The more you loved the first movie, the more you need to shun this one.

I rented this on video not having previously heard of it or knowing what to expect. After watching it, I'm still not sure what to make of it, as it's not an easy movie to categorize, but it was certainly entertaining.It boasts an original story, interesting characters, intelligent dialogue, fine actors, beautiful settings, and high production values.There's bits of black humour sprinkled throughout; kudos to John Malkovich for his performance, as I don't think another actor could've pulled off such subtle humour.There were a few plot holes near the end and I didn't buy the behaviour of some of the characters (like Trevanny's wife), but it wasn't enough to spoil the movie.I've been reading that this didn't get a proper theatrical release in the United States. That doesn't surprise me; if Hollywood was to allow anything good to appear on American theatre screens, audiences might start to notice just how rotten most of its productions are.

Tom Ripley is quite a character. Created by mystery maven Patricia Highsmith, it's a treat to see how an actor will breathe him into being. Matt Damon played him with an air of desperation and a hint of victimization in "The Talented Mr. Ripley". John Malkovich's Ripley is definitely no victim and there's nothing desperate about him. In Ripley's Game, Malkovich fine tunes his Ripley into a cynical, cultured, and arrogant creature, who is equally at ease with his European upper-class neighbors as he is with thieves and killers like Ray Winstone's Reeves. We're introduced to Tom killing the bodyguard of a client in a controlled fit of rage for insulting him during a business deal. This lets us know that it's important not to offend Tom's sense of social correctness. Clearly, Jonathan Trevanny, (played by Dougray Scott), a local craftsman, didn't get this message as Ripley overhears him questioning his taste in home renovation during a party. Malkovich's Ripley is a keen observer of the human condition, not only for the knowledge that he might gain and use at some later date, but also for his own private amusement. His disdainful snobbery isolates him from the rest of humanity, including his own languidly gorgeous wife, who we suspect loves him more for his tales than his talents.Ripley's Game examines what happens to Tom as he executes his revenge upon Jonathan, in the midst of his carefully constructed world of confessional sex games, mob drive-bys, and elegant surroundings. Along the way, we're treated to a more well-developed paradox, known as Tom Ripley, who always keeps us watching.