LT & GP: Ripley's Game

There are hundreds of movies made every year that go directly to video. While most of them are terrible enough to merit such a fate, there are the occasional gems that unjustly bypass the theatres and, therefore, a larger audience. And Ripley's Game is one of those gems.

Ripley's Game is an adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel of the same name. The Tom Ripley character has appeared in movies before, most recently in The Talented Mr. Ripley (also a Highsmith novel). Game has been made into a movie once before, as The American Friend, with a terribly miscast Dennis Hopper as Ripley. Ripley's Game doesn't have that problem, as John Malkovich has been perfectly cast as Ripley.

On to the plot:

Ripley (Malkovich) is a cold, calculating, psychopathic criminal. Yet he lives in a palatial villa and has tons of money. One night, he attends a dinner party. He overhears the host, Trevanny (Dougray Scott), make a crack about Ripley having no taste, which Ripley overhears. Trevanny has cancer, is dying, and really can't pay to have it treated, nor can he afford to provide for his family, post mortem.

A while later, Ripley is contacted by a former associate, Reeves (Ray Winstone). Apparently, the victims of a scam pulled by Reeves and Ripley are seeking retribution. Reeves says a man needs to be killed in order to make it go away. Reeves will pay Ripley to do it. Normally, this is the sort of thing that Ripley would handle himself, but he has something else in mind: He'll double the money and get Trevanny to do it. He knows Trevanny has cancer, and doesn't have much to lose, and he could use the money to set up his family after he dies. That, and Ripley's still seething about the remarks Trevanny made about him. Trevanny accepts, but, as you may have guessed, things to not go as planned.

The great thing about this movie, and the thing that sets it apart from every other Ripley movie, is that Ripley is portrayed by Malkovich as an unfeeling psychopath. In Highsmith's books, everything Ripley did was for personal gain. He was always a psychopath; he didn't just come into it. In the movies, he's always portrayed as a con man, but never as someone who is evil, as he became in the books. And Malkovich is the perfect guy for it. He feels no joy in murder; it's a necessary evil, something that's a means to an end. Nor is he sympathetic. When a character sacrifices himself to save Ripley, Ripley is astounded, asking, "Why would you do that?" as though he expected his comeuppance the way most people expect the sun to rise. Anyone else in this role (like Matt Damon, let's say), and this movie doesn't work. But Malkovich can play these kinds of roles in his sleep, and he makes this scary, scary character work. And the movie is all the better for it.

A great movie that totally got jobbed by its distributors. Check it out.