Tom Ripley, the psychopathic con man who stalks through Patricia Highsmith’s series of novels, stands as one of the most fascinating characters in twentieth‑century fiction—not least because his peculiar brand of amoral sophistication has spurred such wildly divergent cinematic interpretations. From Alain Delon’s sun‑drenched youth in Plein Soleil (Purple Noon) to Matt Damon’s tortured social climber in Anthony Minghella’s Oscar‑laden The Talented Mr. Ripley, each filmmaker has found something new in Highsmith’s gentleman killer. One of the more intriguing, if criminally underrated, incarnations arrived in 2002 when John Malkovich stepped into the role for Liliana Cavani’s Ripley’s Game. This adaptation captures a middle‑aged Ripley whose polish has hardened into something colder and more lethal than any of his screen predecessors, offering a vision that is at once more faithful to Highsmith’s literary creation and more unsettling in its clinical detachment.
The film draws from Highsmith’s eponymous 1974 novel, the third in the Ripley quintet, which had already been translated to screen as Wim Wenders’ The American Friend (1977) with Dennis Hopper as the titular anti‑hero. Where Wenders’ version strained the source material through a filter of New German Cinema expressionism, Cavani’s treatment hews closer to the novel’s narrative spine, even if it sacrifices some of the earlier film’s squirmy, desperate humanity. The story opens with a prologue that establishes Ripley’s operational method: operating from Berlin as a dealer in forged art, he works alongside his coarse British partner Reeves (Ray Winstone). When Reeves attempts to short‑change him, Ripley responds with murderous swiftness, coercing their mark into handing over a small fortune before vanishing into the shadows. This opening sequence, shot with Alfio Contini’s drained, brownish palette, immediately signals that this will be a more subdued, procedural affair than the operatic emotions of Minghella’s picture.
Three years later, Ripley has retired to a lush historic villa in the Veneto, where he lives with his glamorous girlfriend Luisa (Chiara Caselli), a professional harpsichordist whose artistic temperament complements his own refined tastes. His reputation as a connoisseur has elevated him to the status of local pillar, yet at a social function he overhears Jonathan Trevanny (Dougray Scott), a British picture‑framer, insulting his character. The slight is minor—Trevanny suggests Ripley has more money than taste—but it is enough to awaken the predator’s instinct. When Reeves re‑emerges seeking help to eliminate a Russian mobster who has encroached on his Berlin rackets, Ripley refuses to dirty his own hands. Instead, he proposes an ingenious alternative: Trevanny, who is mortally ill with leukaemia, would make the perfect assassin precisely because his law‑abiding background places him off the radar.
For Ripley, the scheme is a deliciously perverse form of revenge; for Trevanny, the promise of a large pay‑out offers a means to provide for his wife Sarah (Lena Headey) and their young son after his death. Reeves lures Trevanny to Berlin under the pretence of a medical consultation, and the framer—after much soul‑searching—agrees to kill the target. The murder is executed, but the affair does not end there: Reeves withholds half the fee, demanding a second hit on a Ukrainian mobster whose death might ignite a gang war and deflect suspicion. Trevanny, now deeper in the moral quagmire, reluctantly accepts. The mission unfolds aboard a train, where Ripley himself intervenes, joining the operation out of sheer amusement. Together they dispatch the mark and one bodyguard, but a second guard survives, leaving a trail that leads straight back to Reeves. Forced to flee Berlin, Reeves seeks sanctuary in Italy, prompting Ripley to orchestrate a lethal ambush in his own villa, with Trevanny as his reluctant accomplice.
Ripley’s Game remains relatively obscure, its profile diminished by the baffling decision to forgo a North American theatrical release after its premiere at the 2002 Venice Film Festival. Industry wisdom suggests distributors feared confusion with Minghella’s 1999 juggernaut, which had cast Ripley as a flamboyant, almost romantic anti‑hero played with hammy intensity by Matt Damon. The comparison is instructive: where The Talented Mr. Ripley is a sumptuous, emotionally overheated period piece, Cavani’s film is a far more subdued, cold, almost clinical thriller. The Italian director, best known for the controversial The Night Porter (1974), brings a technical rigour that borders on the forensic. Ennio Morricone’s score—another by‑the‑numbers composition—adds little warmth, reinforcing the film’s emotional frostiness. Yet this chill is precisely the point: the Veneto locations, with their constantly overcast skies and Palladian villas, create a landscape that mirrors Ripley’s internal weather—bleak, elegant, and inhospitable.
The film’s principal asset is unquestionably John Malkovich. An actor whose career has been built on charismatic villains, Malkovich appears tailor‑made for Ripley. His interpretation is that of a middle‑aged man sharpened by experience, whose brutality is always calculated and whose occasional gestures of kindness feel like tactical manoeuvres. This makes him a more realistic and, paradoxically, more terrifying figure than the younger Ripleys of Alain Delon or Matt Damon. Malkovich’s soft‑spoken delivery, coupled with an air of erudite detachment, captures the character’s philosophical curiosity about human behaviour—the one humanising trait Highsmith permitted her creation. When, at the film’s close, Ripley asks a man who has saved his life, “Why did you do that?”, the line resonates not as gratitude but as a genuine, almost academic inquiry into motive.
Malkovich’s superiority to Dennis Hopper’s jittery, cowboy‑hat‑wearing Ripley in The American Friend is self‑evident; Hopper’s performance, while memorable, belongs to a different, more expressionistic universe. Dougray Scott, meanwhile, proves far more effective as the unwitting accomplice than Bruno Ganz’s interpretation in Wenders’ film. Cavani’s focused direction draws from Scott a performance of palpable physical and emotional anguish, his gaunt frame and haunted eyes conveying the weight of each murderous step. The dynamic between Malkovich and Scott crackles with a sickly chemistry, the veteran predator guiding the dying novice through a moral abyss.
The same cannot be said for the supporting players. Lena Headey, though capable, is given little to do beyond the generic “unsuspecting wife” routine, her Sarah remaining a cipher rather than a fully realised character. Ray Winstone, for his part, delivers yet another iteration of the tough British gangster—a performance so familiar it borders on self‑parody. Chiara Caselli, internationally best known for a small role in My Own Private Idaho, serves primarily as a pretty face, Ripley’s trophy partner whose harpsichord playing adds local colour but little dramatic substance. These weaknesses are not fatal, but they do underscore the film’s central imbalance: it is Malkovich’s show, and everything else orbits his gravitational pull.
Ripley’s Game is hardly a masterpiece, yet it stands as a significant improvement on The American Friend, which often prioritised stylistic bravura over narrative coherence. Cavani’s no‑nonsense direction, combined with Malkovich’s grand performance, yields a solid two hours of neo‑Hitchcockian entertainment. The film’s retro sensibility—Contini’s classical camerawork, the muted colour palette, the Cold‑war ambience—recalls the British thrillers of the 1960s, lending the proceedings a welcome sense of timelessness. Even the production history adds a layer of intrigue: financial difficulties and a prior commitment forced Cavani to leave the shoot before completion, with Malkovich stepping in to direct roughly a third of the footage, including the climactic villa ambush. This unofficial directorial debut may explain the film’s occasional tonal shifts, yet it also speaks to Malkovich’s deep investment in the material.
Ripley’s Game works because it trusts its source material and its lead actor. Malkovich does not beg for sympathy; he presents Ripley as Highsmith wrote him—a narcissistic, amoral improviser whose charm is merely another tool in his arsenal. For those who prefer their thrillers cold, precise, and psychologically astute, Cavani’s adaptation offers a rewarding, if chilly, portrait of one of fiction’s most enduring monsters.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
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