Review – The Talented Mr. Ripley

Before I dig into this, I should admit that I have no affection at all for plots in which a character tells a lie early on and must spend the rest of the movie engaged in ever-more-elaborate deceptions in order to avoid being found out. Stories tend to get on my very last nerve when their protagonists could easily escape peril at any point by either bailing out and vanishing into the night or simply telling the truth. So if your tastes in this regard differ from mine, you might well have a much more pleasant experience with this movie than I did. As things stand, however, I found the darn near endless parade of unhealthy obsessions, contrived stumbling blocks and false endings more than a little annoying. Further, Matt Damon and Jude Law don’t exactly float my boat, and Gwenyth Paltrow was woefully under-cast as the straight, female love interest in what proved to be a gay murder thriller. See if desperate