A lot of people remember the 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley because it featured Matt Damon, somewhat fresh off his breakout turn in Good Will Hunting, as a young sociopath. They also remember Gwyneth Paltrow sunning herself on the Amalfi coast and the saturated colors used in the film. A new take on Patricia Highsmith’s novels is now a limited Netflix series, written and directed by veteran screenwriter Steven Zaillian.
Opening Shot: A ticking clock. Then we see a bunch of other clocks, inside and outside. “ROME, 1961.”
The Gist: A man drags a body down the copious stairs in a building. A cat stares. Then we hear a voice say, “Who’s there?” The man pauses, but then continues to drag the body down the stairs.
“SIX MONTHS EARLIER.” Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott) is in his one-room living situation in New York. He makes his living scamming people out of their money. He does so by pilfering checks from a chiropractor’s office, posing as a collections agency, telling the clients who wrote the checks that they’re behind on the payments, and collecting the payments (with interest) sent to his PO box.
Pausing for a drink at a bar during his bleak existence, he’s approached by a private detective named Alvin McCarron (Bokeem Woodbine); the detective’s client, a wealthy shipbuilder named Herbert Greenleaf (Kenneth Lonergan) is looking for him for undisclosed reasons. “You’re a hard man to find,” McCarron tells Ripley.
Tom ignores the card the detective gives him, but starts to rethink it when he finds out the IRS came to the flop house where he lives, and that when he tries to cash checks for his fake collections agency, the bank flags them.
When he goes to see Greenleaf, the shipbuilder tells Tom that he’s the only one of the people his son Dickie (Johnny Flynn) knew in college who responded to him. He needs someone to go to Naples, Italy to convince Dickie to come back to New York; he’s living as a “writer” and “artist” off of a trust that Greenleaf regrets setting up for him. Because he can’t legally cut off the trust, Greenleaf needs other ways to get Dickie to listen to him.
Tom agrees and makes his way to Naples; once he gets to the village where Dickie lives — which takes hours by bus — he drags his bags to a local inn and asks where Dickie lives. He climbs up what seems like hundreds of steps to get to Dickie’s villa, then is told he’s on the beach. After buying a new, tight pair of swim trunks, he finally “runs into” Dickie, sunning himself with his girlfriend, Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning).
Dickie invites him up to the villa, and as the three of them talk, Tom likes the lifestyle Dickie is living. The Mediterranean views, the boat he has anchored off-shore, the beautiful girlfriend… It doesn’t seem like Dickie is struggling at all. Tom goes to the nicest hotel in town and makes a decision: He wants Dickie Greenleaf’s life.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Ripley, written and directed by Steven Zaillian (The Irishman, Schindler’s List), is based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr. Ripley and its sequel novels. A film version of The Talented Mr. Ripley, starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Cate Blanchett and Philip Seymour Hoffman, was made in 1999. The character of Ripley has also appeared in movies like Purple Noon, The American Friend, and Ripley’s Game.
Our Take: While the late Anthony Minghella, director of the 1999 film, envisioned Tom Ripley’s story as a colorful, sun-splashed story of identity theft and murder, Zaillian’s view of the story is pure noir. Shot in black and white, as he felt Highsmith would have wanted; he lingers on scenes, plays with shadow and light, uses ominous music liberally throughout, and certainly plays on just how sinister Tom Ripley and his plan really is.
Andrew Scott’s version of Ripley is certainly older and more world-weary than Matt Damon’s was, and Scott is fantastic at playing sociopaths. Though he dampens down his British accent to a very flat non-regional American voice, that works for his character because he’s playing Ripley as this guy who doesn’t have a lot to say, and can absorb someone’s life and personality like a sponge soaks up a wine spill.
There’s a bit of a wry sense of humor to Ripley that belies its story, and it seems that Zaillian takes every chance he can get to explore that side of the story. Tom groans and winces as he climbs up and down the steps to Dickie’s villa, and phumphers when he sees even more stairs. His interactions with the innkeeper show that he’s going to have lots of communication problems. He gets visibly ill as the bus he’s on hugs the curves on a mountain road. Given how dark much of the show is, those lighter moments help balance things out a bit, but it doesn’t make Tom look like any less of a sociopath.
It’s hard to get a read on Flynn as Dickie and Fanning as Marge just yet; for now, the two of them just seem like overprivileged Americans wringing as much culture from their location as possible. There certainly are hints that Marge wonders just who in the hell Tom is and why he’s suddenly appeared, but they’re only hinted at in the first episode.
Normally, we’d get annoyed at the deliberate pace Zaillian takes with this story. But we get the purpose it serves here, especially in the first few episodes. He wants to show Tom as a small man with an even smaller life, whose grifts are barely keeping a seedy roof over his head and the government off his back. The first episode establishes this, as well as the literal lengths he will go to in order to find his next victim. Between that and the noirish style, the slower pace actually makes sense.
Sex and Skin: None in the first episode, aside from the sight of Andrew Scott in tight swim trunks.
Parting Shot: Tom looks into a mirror and says, “Yeah, that’s right, Dickie, Dickie Greenleaf. Nice to meet you, too.”
Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Dakota Fanning because we just know that Marge is going to become very skeptical of Tom as he ingratiates himself to Dickie.
Most Pilot-y Line: On the train to Naples, Tom writes a scathing letter to his aunt, telling her she no longer needs to spend her life criticizing him. While he’s doing that, we see a woman who is supposedly the same aunt getting what looks like some brutal dental work. Is Tom imagining that dental work or is it actually happening?
Our Call: STREAM IT. We do admit that Ripley gets off to a bit of a sleepy start. But we’re intrigued by both Scott’s take on Tom Ripley and Zaillian’s decision to giver Patricia Highsmith’s story a noirish patina.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.