Talented Mr Ripley [Blu-ray]

HAVING IT ALL
When picking out films to see, I usually gravitate toward the "small" independent type of film usually avoiding the larger "major" productions. Thus, I avoided "the Talented Mr. Ripley" up until recently. My mistake! "The Talented Mr. Ripley" is outstanding and has, to me, everything a movie should have to make it the "complete film experience"-great script and direction, great acting, wonderful sound tract and beautiful cinematography. This film has it all!
The acting, by all of the actors, is superb. Matt Damon, as Tom Ripley is outstanding. He portrays a very complicated character believably. At no time are you aware that he is acting. This character does things that are, indeed, despicable; however, due to the acting skills of Damon, I actually liked the guy and felt deep sympathy and empathy for him and for his desire to be someone else
(I think we all have been there-at least I have-fortunately all of us don't do what Tom Ripley does, in the film, to achieve...

SLEEK SUSPENSE
Minghella's sleek, gorgeous movie version of Patricia Highsmith's classic novel of suspense is near-perfect. The story, set in and around stunning Italian coastal hot spots, circa the 50s, remains fresh and infinitely compelling; the main character, Tom Ripley, is that fascinating mix of vulnerability and psychotic killer, much like Norman Bates in Psycho. Matt Damon does his best with this role; casting him I think was the film's one half misstep -- Damon exudes such a glamour and self-possession that it is difficult to wholly buy his insecurity, though adding more than a hint of homosexuality does much to make him more believable. The other performances, however, are riveting. Philip Seymour Hoffman is perfection as a smart, slick, obnoxious friend of Dickie's; Cate Blanchett, an added character, is engrossing, funny and heartbreaking, too; Gwenyth Paltrow, often overlooked in the reviews for this film, is spectacular in each and every scene, conveying the privilege of...

A Sociopath's Career Begins...
Patricia Highsmith's first novel of the Tom Ripley series, (five novels in all) The Talented Mr. Ripley, created an anti-hero that no one had ever seen before. The novel and film presents the story through Ripley's eyes, and even though the man is capable of terrible acts, and commits these terrible crimes relentlessly to attain his own aims, we continue to maintain sympathy for the character; we want him to get away with it, and he usually does. Anyone who has read the novel will agree that Anthony Minghella's screenplay remained faithful to the original, veering off on only a few points, however managed to achieve the same tension, disturbance and suspense, also leaving the audience wondering, after Ripley's final hideous crime, what will this sociopath do next.

The film and novel introduces the beginnings of a sociopath's career. For all we know, killing Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law) brutally in the boat was Ripley's first crime. In the film it is almost depicted as an...

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