Ripley's Game

Patricia Highsmith's cheerfully amoral antihero Tom Ripley has been portrayed on screen by a highly disparate group of actors, from Alain Delon (in RenJ Clement's Purple Noon) and Dennis Hopper (in Wim Wenders' The American Friend) to, more recently, Matt Damon (in Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley). But no one has captured the character's silken arrogance and cultivated ruthlessness as well as John Malkovich, who's easily the primary strength in filmmaker Liliana Cavani's adaptation of Highsmith's third Ripley book. Although it also served as the basis for Wenders' picture, Cavani's treatment--apart from changing the locale to sunny Italy--is more faithful to the original, in which Ripley entices a terminally ill neighbor (played by Dougray Scott) to become an unlikely hit man. Since Highsmith's strength always lay more in characterization than plotting, fidelity is not entirely a virtue in this case. Still, Malkovich captures Ripley's snide humor and nonchalant nastiness to such perfection that the flaws pale into insignificance. Recommended. (F. Swietek)