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This Ripley is an expression of our anxieties, our fear of being rejected or found out for the frauds that, deep down, we may suspect we are. Ultimately he is a figure out of Poe or Dostoyevsky, tormented by disgust at the creature he's become. What he is not is Highsmith's Ripley, a suave villain who loves his work, whom we may not admire but have to envy. Could not Damon have invested a little charisma in the role? One thinks longingly of Leonardo DiCaprio, who was once mentioned for the part. His soft features would have rhymed nicely with Law's; his boyishness could have tempted us into loving Tom instead of only pitying him.
You may ask again, Who cares if the movie is unlike the book? It has to succeed as its own experience. But the alterations here--in a film so sumptuous and intelligent one wants to embrace it--diminish the richness of a chillingly complex character. The film is some stranger pretending to be Tom Ripley. And like Ripley, it had to kill the thing it would become.
--Reported by Georgia Harbison/New York