Title: Confused
Review: The director (who is also the screenwriter, so he gets all the blame) has sanitized Ripley to make him more "sympathetic." Tom Ripley is only interesting when he is not sympathetic! The whole homoeroticism was wayyyyyy overplayed in the media; there's nothing here that will make a literate, half-sophisticated person sit up and be shocked or even intrigued. Put Matt Damon in an ................. scene and THEN you have him really trashing his All-American image. The movie completely lost me when Tom supposedly kills Dickie out of frustrated "love" and then in the next scene has him coldly trying to pass himself off as Dickie. Apparently the novel has Tom killing Dickie in cold blood; now THAT would be more interesting. In terms of acting, Gwyneth Paltrow was annoying. Only Cate Blanchett I got excited to seeing whenever she came on screen. I think Minghella needs to stop making these bloated, cinematography-driven allegories and focus on character, character, character.
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