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, 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: 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. *** ?
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.
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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