Okay, here's the deal. Like most everybody, I'm still catching up from the holidays. That whole mess with the "Y2K" crisis really threw me off, 'cause, to be quite frank, I fell for it all, hook, line, and sinker. The canned goods, the generator, the whole enchilada. I spent the last days of December preparing to bunker down for the long haul, fighting my way through crowds at grocery stores, hardware stores, and all that. Finally I gave up and called my friend, Saigon Steve Davenport, and he set me up.
Saigon Steve owns Saigon Steve's Survival Palace, "your one stop for survival." He owed me a few favors for some medical treatments I'd given him through the years. Nothing illegal, mind you, just the odd dose of penicillin now and then. See, Saigon tends to go into places he shouldn't go, and come out with stuff he didn't have when he went in, and he comes over to the clinic to get rid of it without his wife Connie finding out. After reminding him about a certain trip to the Wild Side Cafe, he rustled up a huge box of freeze-dried food, a solar generator, and some other goodies. On the house.
Then, zippo! Here I was, filling ashtrays and waiting for Y2K to ruin us all, and nothing. Thankfully, after monitoring CNN all day, I realized that the Y2K Hype was gonna go down in history as the biggest bust since New Coke. I unbolted my door and took off for the party over at Junior Willis' house, a little ticked that I'd been suckered, but even more bummed that the hibernating had cost me a few days' worth of movie-going.
So, now confident that there'd be enough power to run the projectors, I headed first for the films everyone was raving about, the ones that gathered the Golden Globe nominations. I turned up for The Talented Mr. Ripley first, thinking that, with a cat like that, it had to be a winner. Three Oscar® winners, lots of nominations, lots of star power. Gotta be there, right?
Did I mention earlier that I was a sucker for overhyped stuff?
When Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) meets up with New York rich guy Herbert Greenleaf (James Rebhorn), the moneyman mistakes Tom for a Princeton classmate of his son Dickie, played by Jude Law (Midnight in the Garden of Good
and Evil). He offers Tom a paid trip to Italy to go over and convince his son to come back to the States. Tom readily accepts the trip, but once he gets there, he sees the lifestyle Dickie is leading, and decides to stay a while. Dickie is living the high life in Italy, complete with fine clothes, fine wine, fine yacht, and fine woman, namely his girlfriend Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow). Tom assumes the role of monied cohort, and eases into the lifestyle. And, before long, the slightly psychotic Tom decides to ease into Dickie's identity too. I'll reveal nothing more, lest I ruin the "thriller" aspect of this movie.
But, then again, the thriller aspect is ruined by the movie itself, thanks to some pale performances, and some perfectly odd decisions by the director. Anthony Minghella spills his hand way too early several times, revealing Tom's desire to assume Dickie's personality before he even meets Dickie. He also puts a "new spin" (how I hate that phrase) on a character point from the original book by Patricia Highsmith. In the book, Tom Ripley is a sociopath who uses people to get exactly what he wants out of life. Minghella, however, has decided that Ripley is acting out of repressed longing for Dickie's body as much as his lifestyle. Suddenly, the movie becomes a run-of-the-miller about a repressed gay murderer, put on a low shelf alongside glossy schlock like Basic Instinct. It cheapens the story, and, honestly, it makes it significantly less interesting. There's an art to a perfect con man, trying to get in with the hoi polloi by becoming one of them. Now I'm far from an activist, but I gotta agree that the deviant gay killer idea is a tired device.
Then, of course, there's the cast. Of the three main players, Jude Law, believe it or not, is the standout. He has a smoldering energy about him that makes me wonder if he and Damon shouldn't have swapped characters. Law's natural elan would've made Tom Ripley a suave con man, one that could assimilate easily into whatever world he chose to be a member of. Damon, though, suddenly looks like he forgot everything he ever learned about characterization. He's as exciting to watch here as Field Day at a nursing home. I realize he was trying to get away from his "good-guy" persona, but he's gotta know that, to do so, he has to act like a bad guy. Evil is, well, evil. It burns within, and radiates in every move and gesture and cut of the eye. Evil, according to Damon, is mayonnaise and Wonder Bread. Noting even remotely dark to this character, and that's a shame. Even Miss Gwyneth is bland here. Her Marge is Saran Wrap, as one-dimensional as a character on the daytime soaps. Cate Blanchett almost steals the movie from her, giving an amusing turn as a money-bored deb who falls for Tom-as-Dickie.
And, in true Minghella fashion, what he lacks in story, he tries to make up for with travelogue footage. He did it in The English Patient, lingering forever on the beauty of sand, sky, sand, sunsets, sand, sand and more sand. At least this time we get Italy. He shot this movie in Naples, Rome, Venice, and some smaller Italian cities. I've been lucky enough to travel in Italy, and even I didn't realize how beautiful Italy was until now. Minghella makes beautiful use of Venetian architecture, Mediterranean sunsets, and other visual feasts. (And precious little sand.) It is exquisite, yes, but it does nothing to keep you interested in what you paid for, namely, a top-notch thriller. If you're trying to make us see what Tom wants, all this beauty, all this wonder, then, fine, show it and move on. Lingering on it for as long as you do only makes us wish we were there seeing it for ourselves instead of watching this movie.
True to form, though, this movie snagged a bunch of nominations at the Golden Globes. One of them, amazingly, is a Best Actor nod for Damon. I will not get into arguing the decision of the Hollywood Foreign Press, because they're the same people that gave Pia Zadora an acting award. This act alone will forever cancel out any wise decision they might make concerning talent. But I agree that this is the sort of movie that's made specifically for the purpose of winning awards. Visually, it is magnificent sometimes, and, perhaps, Jude Law's performance delivers credibility. Minghella managed to get Kristen Scott Thomas a nomination for The English Patient, and I've seen California Redwoods that were less wooden. It bothers me that, because of this film, there will be other much more worthy performances and films that will be ignored. I'm sure, come February, we'll be discussing the actor that got shafted, or the director or picture that got ignored, and there will sit Mr. Ripley, in the spot that another deserved.
Look, I know I'm probably going to get hate mail for saying this, but, bottom line, The Talented Mr. Ripley is sucker-bait, like a three-dollar Rolex. Instead of a taut thriller with exotic locales and hot performances, it's a turtle-paced melodrama with one or two half-decent performances by supporting players. It has its moments, but it is not, repeat, not one of the best films of 1999. And if you believe all the others that say it is, meet me down at Saigon Steve's, and I'll sell you a low priced Y2K survival kit.
Image copyright Parmount Pictures.
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under the knife