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For a time, the heir is amused by Tom's charm and novelty. But Dickie is easily bored, and he grows tired of Tom. Seeing the chance both to rid himself of a critical friend and to replace him, Tom kills Dickie in the sea off San Remo, buries the body and goes to Rome, setting himself up as Dickie. The ruse lasts until Freddie Miles (Hoffman), an obnoxious but observant pal of Dickie's, comes to visit. Panicked by discovery, Tom bashes Freddie's head and deposits the corpse in a cemetery. Now Ripley's game begins with the police and Dickie's family. Tom will lie, forge letters and documents, anything to keep being Dickie--a role he feels he was born to play.
In writing Ripley, Highsmith had two bolts of brilliance. The first was to let the bad guy get away with his crimes. All mystery writers are murderers; they get into the mind, under the skin, of a killer, if only to determine how the foul deed can be accomplished. Then, typically, they bring in a detective to unravel the plot and cuff the culprit. Highsmith simply ditched the civilized pretense of justice avenged. She tore the final, comeuppance chapter out of Ripley's story, left him giddy with triumph--and let him flourish in four more books. The snake, having shed its old skin, slithers away; the reader is both shocked and pleased. Crime pays.
Minghella does not let Ripley off that easily. He devises two characters who fall for the killer and get in his way: a sweet, rich buttinsky (Blanchett) and a gentle homosexual (Davenport). Can he kiss them, or kiss them off, without bumping them off? We won't tell, but we will say that Tom has second thoughts about his addiction to killing the things he loves. The film lets Tom off the hook for the murders of Dickie and Freddie. Then it creates a new hook and leaves you wondering if Ripley will hang from it.
"I was trying to honor the book, which is about a man who commits murder and isn't caught," Minghella says. "But I also wanted to investigate what that actually means. At the end of the film, Ripley is imprisoned by the consequences of his own action. There's a difference between public accountability and private justice. He appears to have gotten away; he seems to get away with everything. In a way he's sentenced to freedom. It's painful to have this talent for escape, for being able to improvise one's way out of any situation. To Ripley, it's a curse."
Highsmith's second coup was Ripley himself--a fastidious fellow of refined if acquired tastes who is utterly unimpeded by conscience. Tom is a sportsman. "Risks were what made the whole thing fun," he muses. His lack of guilt or shame makes Tom a blithe, resourceful fellow, totally at ease with the man he's become.