Ripley's Game
by Liliana Cavani
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DVD details
Actor: Dougray Scott, John Malkovich, Lena Headey, Ray Winstone, Uwe MansshardtDirector: Liliana Cavani
Brand: MALKOVICH,JOHN
Writer: Liliana Cavani
Producer: Cam Galano
Producer: Ileen Maisel
Producer: Marco Chimenz
Producer: Mark Ordesky
Writer: Charles McKeown
Writer: Patricia Highsmith
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Anamorphic, Color, Digital Sound, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD-Video, NTSC, Surround Sound, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 110 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-03-30
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: New Line Home Video
DVD Reviews of Ripley's Game
DVD Review: Ripley to your aid?
Summary: 4 Stars
I like movies to follow the book which is not the way this started, but having said that, it did follow the book for the most part. I thought Ripley was portrayed well as the socialpath he is, unlike other Ripley movies. Overall a well done effort. DVD Review: Tom Ripley Is At It Again
Summary: 5 Stars
"Ripley's Game," a movie version of the Patricia Highsmith novel, like the "Talented Ripley" (the Matt Damon flick) takes considerable liberties with her text. George Malkovich does a fine job in the part of Tom Ripley, although I feel he's wrong, too effete, for the part. The beginning scene in Berlin, not from the book, is there to establish Tom's character as a murderer and a crook who does errands for a thief named Reeves (Ray Winstone).
In the movie Ripley's home is far too elaborate, too much like a palace rather than a country villa. A picture framer, Jonathan Trevanny, makes scurrilous remarks about Tom, and Tom decides to get back at him by setting him up through Reeves as an assassin. Trevanny goes along with the crime because he's dying of cancer and wants to take care of his wife and son after his death.
In the movie Tom's wife, Heloise, is his enabler as she is in four books of the series, but he didn't let in her in on his nefarious schemes the way he does in the movie.
The killing scene in the zoo in which Trevanny kills a Russian mob boss is very effective. The picture framer gets talked into a second killing, this time on a train, and Ripley, cool and brutal, true psychopath that he is, turns up to help him. The most powerful scene in the movie: multiple murders in a WC.
Ripley says, "I'm a creation, a gifted improviser. I don't have a conscience."
In the last part of the movie the mob bodyguards come after Ripley and Jonathan at Ripley's mansion, and the movie stays close to the book's plot.
Judging it as a movie apart from a novel adaptation, it is extremely effective with a brilliant conclusion in which Malkovich at his wife's harpsichord concert proves by his silences what a fine actor he is.
Dennis Hopper starred in "The American Friend," another version of this novel.
The American Friend
DVD Review: 3.5 stars out of 4
Summary: 4 Stars
The Bottom Line:
Ripley's Game is an intelligent thriller with a superb turn by Malkovich in the lead and capable support from the rest of the cast; a worthy addition to the handful of Ripley movies, it's a sadly-underappreciated film.
DVD 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.
DVD Review: "Why did you do that....?"
Summary: 5 Stars
"Ripley's Game" is terrifying, humorous, and possesses an infectious cancer that makes you sympathize deeply with John Malkovich's older Tom Ripley, a sociopathic aesthete who seems to appreciate the finest forms of art--classical music, painting, Italian symphonies--and then in the same hour garrote four people on a subway train with only one concern: whether or not his expensive Brazilian watch has broken.
In this film, Ripley has retired to a villa in Italy with a beautiful girlfriend he plans to marry. At times Malkovich clearly steps out of sociopathic form to add a little warmth to Ripley's charming and repulsive character: he hangs on every word she says, buys her a fabulous organ from the old country, and bakes her the finest bread he can find. All the while he is fixated on one unfortunate man, a middle-aged picture framer dying of cancer, who made the mistake of insulting Ripley at a dinner party while he was standing behind him. Jonathan Trevanny is the everyman, unremarkable except for his growing misfortune, with a newborn child and a loving wife adding to his well founded financial existential anxieties.
Ripley's thug friend Reeves (played with impeccable slime by Ray Winstone) hires Trevanny for the assassination of a Russian drugdealer.
Despite his obvious moral tribulations about the matter, he actually does it: when Ripley discovers this, he is dumbfounded. One gets the chilling impression that somehow, in some way, Ripley knew he was capable of it.
The pay off is 50,000 dollars and this enables Jonathan to ensure a future for his child.
Reeves then propositions Jonathan to garrote a Balkan mob boss on a train, but Ripley, for mysterious reasons, will not allow Jonathan to be used in this way. First of all he is incapable of it, and there also seems to be a demented paternal quality to their relationship. Malkovich is perfect as this soulless and yet somehow affectionate robot of a man--he voice is calm, warm, possessing full knowledge that he is without a conscience and desperately wanting to know why.
At one point he tells Jonathan flatly: "When I was younger, about your age, it troubled me badly that I lacked what you're displaying now: a conscience. It no longer does. I'm not afraid of witnesses or people because I don't feel that anyone's watching. Nothing momentous just happened on this train. The world is not any lesser now that these men are gone. A little less noise, a little less harm, perhaps, that's all."
The ending of the film is a gesture of self sacrifice on the part of Jonathan which may or may not change Tom Ripley: the ending of this twisted and somehow hilarious film is actually upbeat in a way. Ripley is able, perhaps for the only time in his life, to appreciate or witness that most unusual of human behavior: selflessness. This is one of the most drop dead funny films I have ever seen: Malkovich is the wittiest and most carefree sociopath in the history of film, as far as I can see. His dialogue is priceless. Ennio Morricone's score is gorgeous and sets the mood very well. A must see!
Description of Ripley's Game
Mr. Ripley emerges from retirement to preside over one last deadly game, but can he persuade an innocent man to commit murder?The slippery protagonist of The Talented Mr. Ripley returns in another deadly guise in Ripley's Game, a well-appointed star vehicle. The star this time is John Malkovich, whose older Tom Ripley has settled into an Italian villa and a life of aesthetic contemplation (a little like Hannibal Lecter in Hannibal). A former partner (Ray Winstone) drags an innocent frame-maker (Dougray Scott), dying of leukemia, into the role of unexpected hit man. Ripley, for his own enigmatic reasons, helps. Liliana Cavani, of The Night Porter notoriety, directed this handsome if nebulous film (which has no connection to the Matt Damon picture, other than a Patricia Highsmith source novel). Malkovich exudes his usual oily disenchantment with the world; Lena Headey, like the location footage, is gorgeous. The same novel was adapted in very different style by Wim Wenders for his brilliant 1977 film, The American Friend, with Dennis Hopper and Bruno Ganz. --Robert Horton
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