Pluskylang Great Film overall

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

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

Desertman84 The cool and mannered sociopath Tom Ripley returns to the big screen in director Liliana Cavani's crime thriller entitled,Ripley's Game.The film stars John Malkovich as Tom Ripley and Dougray Scott, together with Ray Winstone,Lena Headey and Chiara Caselli.It was adapted from the 1974 novel by Patricia Highsmith.Living a life of luxury as an art dealer in northern Italy with his musician wife Luisa, Ripley attends a party thrown by Jonathan Trevanny and overhears the host making critical comments about Ripley's fashion sense. Enraged, Ripley immediately plots his retaliation for this slight, which comes via a reunion with his former business partner Reeves. Reeves seeks out Ripley's help in finding an unrecognized assassin to kill a Russian gangster, and Ripley suggests he talk to Trevanny -- whom Ripley knows has recently been diagnosed with leukemia and is also desperately strapped for cash. Trevanny reluctantly accepts the offer, in order to insure his family's security -- but is pressured into a repeat performance, which draws the ire of Ripley. The situation quickly spirals out of control to the point of drawing the attention -- and anger -- of the Russian mob, forcing Ripley to intervene. But the master criminal also develops a respect for his unwitting victim, forming an unlikely friendship under the most dire of circumstances.This film is characterized by John Malkovich's brilliant performance as Tom Ripley.He is playful as well as perverse as he steals the show in the movie. As for the story,it has a great satisfying distillation of nastiness, ingenuity and humor that only both narrative of Highsmith and the direction of Cavani could provide in the genre of crime thrillers. It is highly recommended for viewers who love great films that has both brilliant performances,superb direction and classic story combined. Arguably,this is one of the most underrated and less popular movies ever shown.

MBunge 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.

bootlebarth According to IMDb, 'Ripley's Game' cost about $30 million to make. I suppose it helped a few people. John Malkovich, perhaps the most narcissistic, look-at-me actor ever to strike gold in Hollywood, presumably earned a million or two. What we have here is yet another example of the overpaid watched by the underemployed while millions or billions remain undernourished throughout this overcrowded, callous, corrupt, ill-governed world.The plot is stupid beyond belief, and the way it unfolds is also stupid beyond belief. The plot is so stupid that I'd be stupid to summarise it, and any readers would be stupid if they read my distillation of all the stupidities.Why, while living in a world where millions of infants die every year from preventable causes, do people make and watch nonsense like 'Ripley's Game'? Surely time and money could be put to a better use.I thought that Patricia Highsmith, the authorial creator of Ripley, is regarded as a writer of some talent. If the film is even loosely faithful to her novel, the world would be a better place if her books were pulped. I can't help repeating the word: stupid, stupid, stupid.Everyone who is listed on the credits, which run to the usual hundreds, should be ashamed. The only saving grace of this terrible film is the seductive European, mainly Italian, locations. Give me a plodding travel documentary any time.What's the stupidest of a rich choice of stupid scenes? Perhaps the events in the German train toilet, where three garroted corpses (one of which returns to life soon after, wearing a stupid bandage on his ear to indicate that he was the guy almost killed by a wire round his throat) and two assassins comfortably fit into the toilet.I could take a week to list a small fraction of the stupidities in 'Ripley's Game'. I was stupid to view it from start to finish. I'm being stupid to waste more time on this IMDb review. Nobody will read this before they see the film. Anybody who reads this after seeing the film is stupidly adding to the time they have already wasted in its observance.There was a word in the back of my mind that might usefully provide the most concise of summaries. What was it? I remember - STUPID.

mindcat Although I thought early on this flick would be somewhat mindless, I was surprised to find a gem of insight into human character. Ripley, of course, is rich and without conscience so we could easily believe. What in fact Ripley's game really is I am unsure unless we could presume he is Satan in disguise.The psychological abduction of the young father who it was said had a fatal disease, could have been rewritten I think to make the good vs. evil underpinning and irony stronger. Indeed, what did the young man have to lose if his disease was fatal. I suppose one could say, to do as he did, allowing manipulation by Ripley to do great evil, underscores what many soldiers know, to kill once difficult, often and many easy.The plot seemed illogical at times and rushed towards the end. Do you really think, will all these dead bodies, some have baked story about a robbery would explain her dead husband and the German Moffia thugs?The contrast between who Ripley was objectively, a deceptive murderer and thug verses the refined music lover and cultured swine, cannot be over looked.Murder is murder and blood is blood after all.The flick left me pondering some of the more dicey parts of human existence, despite its short comings.