RIPLEY (2024)

Watched 4/10/24 (Netflix)

As with the ‘99 classic, it’s easy to forget how heartless this story is when every frame is constructed with an amalgam of lush Italian iconography and detailed, hardworking attention to monochrome beauty by the teams behind the cameras.

Ripley is a real son of a bitch. I like how little this one seemed to care. Whereas Damon played the character with a more clearcut romantic angle, Zaillian and Scott choose here to make Ripley more reptilian, cold, almost annoyed with the hand he is often dealt, despite that hand involving murder. Damon’s Tom sometimes let emotion get the best of him where Scott’s has been tweaked to be anything but emotional. The black and white for me really worked as more than a parlor trick, emphasizing the black humor and blacker soul of Ripley’s merciless mission.

So much is left up to the viewer in this show in the best of ways. It’s not in a plot hole sense but instead we never get the Oscar reel psychological deep dive, most recently annoyingly dumped in the five-minute one-take Mia Goth outburst toward the end of Pearl. I don’t need to hear about all the trauma—it’s such a worn out trope. Sometimes you just like to see the bad guy win and it doesn’t need to be deeper than that.

Our movie/TV landscape has been so overly wrangled by the hero’s journey nucleus, it is nice to have a story here where the character is so completely irredeemable and distant. I am the number one hero’s journey fan. It has given me my beloved Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, etc. But variety is the spice of life and this felt different. The Highsmith Ripley stuff just refuses to play by those rules. 

And with this being a reboot, I’m damn glad it wasn’t overhauled to give Tom some melodramatic, whiney, traumatic backstory that he has outbursts about. Keep it quiet and let the audience work with the breadcrumbs of backstory you give. Zaillian’s script was great at giving you just enough dialogue to interpret things however you wanted to. Didn’t insult one’s intelligence. And when it did get into dramatics or some deliciously dark comedy, it remained subtle, completely rejecting the idea of even slightly drifting away from its cloudy, reserved nature.

But cloudy could also describe the look of the show. Was really worried that the black and white was just there to catch eyes and invite fanboy pontification at the expense of actual execution. Ala a Werewolf by Night or some other cheap knockoff that just threw a filter on and didn’t know how to or chose not to put in any other effort. This utilized some beautiful matte backgrounds, wonderful shadow work, and really thoughtful set design to make the whole retro look worth it. And anything on the water was just striking, absolutely striking. I was won over early on in the episode count.

None of this would have worked without the cast though. Never seen Scott before—such a multifaceted and simultaneously relaxed performance, you can tell he’s as smart as Tom Ripley is. Flynn as Dickie can’t compete with Jude Law and doesn’t try to. Another subtle performance that I enjoyed! And Dakota Fanning is about the same as she usually is. Particularly enjoyed her later-episode stuff and back and forth with Scott in that final act.

If I did have a note, it would be that this does struggle at times to justify its length, somehow being hours longer than the ‘99 joint but getting through seemingly less plot. But then again I kinda loved how comfortable it was wallowing slowly in its own sick carelessness. Thematically on point.

Also—shoutout to the boat scene.

8/10