| 100 |
Chicago Sun-Times
The movie is as intelligent a thriller as you'll see this year.
|
| 100 |
San Francisco Examiner
It's that rare movie with a sense of timeliness that is eternal, and a protagonist whose soul-crushed angst, even at its most fatal, speaks to the little boy/girl lost in everyone.
|
| 100 |
San Francisco Chronicle
This thriller is so expertly -- and perversely -- poised that audience members may find themselves secretly rooting for the duplicitous Ripley.
|
| 91 |
Entertainment Weekly
Minghella makes an enticing, intelligent, well-shaped picture about the extreme perils of class envy and sexual panic.
|
| 90 |
TNT RoughCut
The talented Mr. Minghella is aping Alfred Hitchcock as effectively as Tom Ripley is doing Dickie Greenleaf.
|
| 90 |
Film.com
A dark film that raises more questions than it answers -- and it's meant to.
|
| 90 |
Film.com
In the hands of Minghella and his star, Matt Damon, Ripley has become a more complex character, in some ways more understandable and approachable, in other ways as enigmatic as ever.
|
| 89 |
Austin Chronicle
Just the thing to clear your Capra-glutted holiday movie palate.
|
| 88 |
Miami Herald
Delivers all the expected moments of high suspense --that is worthy of Hitchcock
|
| 88 |
Christian Science Monitor
The picture has fine ensemble acting and superb Italian scenery. It would have more power if it were shorter and tighter.
|
| 88 |
USA Today
In a possible breakthrough role, Law would seem to be the big winner.
|
| 88 |
Boston Globe
A slick, twisty, top-of-the-line crime thriller with gorgeously sensual textures and a screenful of wickedly faceted performances.
|
| 88 |
Baltimore Sun
The only thing missing from this rich production is an emotional charge, which Highsmith could create on the page but which Minghella doesn't quite capture on screen.
|
| 83 |
Portland Oregonian
It's a refreshing sensation, even if it makes you feel a touch seasick at first, and the fittingly eerie conclusion to a lavish and unsettling movie.
|
| 83 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
It demands people pay attention and look inward to find the private compass that will navigate us through murky sensibilities that are as capable of seducing us as they are Tom Ripley.
|
| 80 |
The New York Times
Janet Maslin
Carnal, glamorous and worth the price.
|
| 80 |
Variety
Performances are aces top to bottom
|
| 80 |
Los Angeles Times
A beautifully mounted and directed film that, despite the presence of Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow, is unexpectedly lacking in emotional impact.
|
| 80 |
Rolling Stone
The talented Mr. Minghella has made an imperfect movie but not an impersonal one. His morality tale means to get under the skin, and does.
|
| 80 |
LA Weekly
Although he never matches the book in either brilliance or sheer perversity, Minghella has remained essentially true to his source.
|
| 80 |
Film.com
May be Hitchcock on holiday, but that's a perfectly enjoyable vacation.
|
| 75 |
New York Daily News
Matt Damon's performance isn't bad, but it pales in comparison with Law's.
|
| 75 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Takes startling - and startlingly unpleasant - turns. This is not a film with anything approximating a conventional ending.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Tribune
Minghella's psychological redraft muffles the menace, squanders the tension, throws away the main character and plot engine and turns Ripley into something he never was or should be.
|
| 75 |
New York Post
This film of mistaken identity, murder, class envy and (bi)sexual tension doesn't live up to its own promise.
|
| 74 |
Mr. Showbiz
A near-perfect confection, a beautifully executed Hollywood all-you-can-eat salad bar of glamour, plot twists, breathtaking Mediterranean vistas, and jazz.
|
| 70 |
TV Guide
This coolly beautiful film is both a superior thriller and an engrossing study of a sociopath's progress.
|
| 70 |
Salon.com
It must be hard to misread the tone of a book as single-minded as Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley, but Anthony Minghella manages somehow.
|
| 70 |
Dallas Observer
Scott Kelton Jones
Numbs as much as it unnerves.
|
| 70 |
Washington Post
Enter the world of the sociopathic killer and enjoy.
|
| 70 |
Slate
Matt Damon can't quite piece together a compelling poseur.
|
| 60 |
Newsweek
Damon's Ripley is considerably different from the charming sociopath in Patricia Highsmith's novel or the smooth lothario played by Alain Delon in the 1960 French thriller "Purple Noon."
|
| 60 |
Chicago Reader
This adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel is commercial to the core.
|
| 38 |
Charlotte Observer
It's ploddingly directed, indifferently acted and insufficiently frightening.
|
| 30 |
Village Voice
It's a sign of how watered-down the movie is that only the supporting actors have any bite.
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