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The Talented Mr. Ripley (As directed by the not-so-talented Mr. Minghella)

by Bill Zellmer

Logically, you would think, Hollywood should be able to improve upon the original, particularly a 35-year-old movie, when it does the remake, especially when the original is virtually a classic as in the case of "The Talented Mr. Ripley." Alas, it seems to almost never happen. In this case, the attempt is an absolute disaster.

The French originally made "Ripley" in the 1960s as, if I have the translation right, "Poor Margie." The eminent crime film director, Martin Scorsese, brought it to this country a couple of years ago. With its title changed to "Purple Noon," it was shown on Direct TV for a while and is now available on video. Suggestion: Skip the remake, see the original. Even with subtitles, it's one of the best crime thrillers I've ever seen. The remake is one of the worst.

Here's the basic story: A wealthy American shipbuilder hires ne'er-do-well Tom Ripley to travel to Italy to persuade his expatriate son, Dickie Greenleaf, to return to America and assume his rightful place in the family business. The father is under the mistaken impression that young Tom and his son were school friends. Handsome- in fact, he resembles Dickie Greenleaf-and charming, Tom in fact is a callow opportunist who barely knew the son. He's also envious, greedy and utterly ruthless. He covets everything that well-bred Dickie posseses, including his education, his wealth, his casual lifestyle among the European upperclass. And most of his all, his lovely live-in, Margie.

Tom's real skills are lying, impersonations-he has been a small time actor-and forgery. Poor and with little education, he has scant self-esteem. He sees success only in becoming Dickie Greenleaf, and soon he is mimicking Dickie's every gesture, practicing forging his signature and coldly calculating Dickie's demise: He will have it all, Dickie's wealth, his sailboat, his girl-his life.

Director Anthony Minghella was largely responsible for the mishmash Hollywood made of another great story, "The English Patient," partly through casting the cold-blooded Ralph Fiennes as the lead when the part called for an actor who resonated warmth and feeling-somebody about whom the viewer could care.

He's made the same grievous error in this collage of stupidity. Imagine this: Jude Law (who gives the best performance in the film) plays the handsome, blond Dickie Greenleaf, who is also tanned and talented. Imagine who Minghella has cast as Tom, a character who, impersonating Dickie, must fool bankers, hotel managers, Customs officials, homicide investigators etc. None other than runty Matt Damon who plays Tom pale, wimpy, unskilled and unaware. He's also brown-haired and bespectacled. Damon even wears old-fashioned horn-rimmed glasses and looks like a total nerd.

In fact, Tom is so homely that at one point Dickie assures him, "You know, Tom, you really aren't ugly without those glasses." So we are supposed to believe that this character can assume Dickie Greenleaf's persona? Whatever were the filmmakers thinking?

In the remake, Tom is also a raging homosexual. Yes, that's the big improvement Minghella has made. Now Tom doesn't yearn for Dickie's possessions, his respectability-and certainly not for his girl. He literally pants, night and day, for- Dickie. In the book and original movie, Tom murders Dickie to take his place and everything he possesses, especially Margie, whom he desired far more than Dickie's wealth. In this, he kills Dickie in a jealous lover's rage, and then cuddles the bloodied body in a sequence that is at once ludicrous, hilarious and pathetic.

"Ripley" features Gwyneth Paltrow as Margie. She has little to do except smile benevolently as Dickie and Tom cavort, then twist her face into ugly shapes as she either cries or snarls when Dickie turns up missing and she begins to suspect Tom has killed him. She confirms what I suspected when I saw her first in "A Perfect Murder," another Hollywood hodgepodge of a remake (from the excellent Hitchcock thriller, "Dial M for Murder"). She can't act. And she looks 10 years older than her co-stars.

"Purple Noon" starred Alain Delon, for a couple of decades France's leading portrayer of villainous yet sympathetic cheats. He slipped into the Tom Ripley role like a hand into a greased glove. The film, always taut and suspenseful, showed Tom plotting to take over Dickie Greenleaf's life with the meticulous precision of a master criminal planning a major heist. With Dickie out of the way, he had to carry out an elaborate ruse to convince Margie and friends that Dickie was well but had abandoned them. He became Dickie's courier, conveying notes to Margie.

In both films Dickie's friend Freddie (an excellent performance in each) discovers Tom's fraud and Tom, as Dickie, murders him. The police suspect the suddenly missing Dickie, though they are also hugely suspicious of everything Tom tells them. (In the remake the police enter the picture only briefly, and then as buffoons, never as a force that could menace Tom's charade.)

Thus, Tom must keep alive the myth of Dickie for Margie and family and friends, who are always just a step away from uncovering the truth. Tom, always desperate and furtive as a fox, is also always just one step ahead of the police who want him as Dickie for murder. Minghella, who also did the screenplay, captures none of this, and thus robs the story of its suspense and energy. He also omits the original's deliciously clever and bitterly ironic ending.

"Ripley" was adapted from a novel by American author Patricia Highsmith, herself an expatriate. She also wrote "Strangers on a Train," which Hitchcock turned into another suspense thriller, also available on TV and tape.

With Tom Ripley, Highsmith created something unique: a series character who was the villain rather than the hero. In her version, Ripley got away with the murders, though they would continue to haunt him in further episodes. He assumed his true identity but somehow hung onto Dickie's money, or at least a portion of it. He married and lived in southern France, as did the author, but continued to lead a double life, respectable on one hand but in his dark, secret world he pursued his larcenous and murderous ways that always seemed on the verge of exposure.

A couple of novels in the series are available at the Cape library. Others may be obtained through booksellers. Though written in the languid style of the 1950s and '60s, they tell gripping stories regardless.