Interesting but Over Indulgent, Over Padded and Over Cooked
Oscar winning director/writer Steven Zaillian gives us another incarnation of the fascinating Tom Ripley character most famously portrayed by Matt Damon in 1999's The Talented Mr. Ripley but also seen in several other films. This version though is all the 1999 version as Ripley (Andrew Scott) goes to Italy to buddy up to Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) and assume his identity. Ripley's sudden involvement irks Greenleaf's girlfriend Marge (Dakota Fanning) and friend Freddie (Eliot Sumner) who have their doubts.
The 1999 version was close to perfection as a taut, tantalizing thriller with excellent performances across the board. This version is slick, scrumptious to look at and has a visually arresting, stylish aesthetic. Having the story shown in black and white is initially distracting in early episodes as it feels pretentious but is used to interesting visual effect. Shades of Hitchcock is very evident. Beautiful cinematography, lush technical qualities, excellent music score make this a polished production.
The story wobbles though. Like a lot of streaming programs today, this doesn't justify 8-episodes. A lot of it is padding, long drawn-out scenes of characters doing absolutely nothing. Weird because it omits a lot from the story (which we get to later). There's episodes where the lead is just wandering around looking into nothing.
The story is also a bit of a mess. All for artistic freedom and creativity but it deviates a lot from the original story but doesn't really add anything in. The Dickie character is killed off very early and there's a few episodes just of Ripley doing nothing much. The Freddie character comes in one episode, disappears completely until they are back for their murder scene but by then we've had just one scene of the character so we're not invested in anything about this person. The disposing of Freddie's body takes a LONG time (a good 30 minutes) of Ripley driving around Italy to dispose a body. Again the padding is extraordinary. The Marge character disappears throughout and there is a lack of chemistry between her and Dickie only because they barely have any screen time together. Curious to why the 8-hours is focused on long, extensively drawn out scenes of the lead just walking by himself around Italy. A few characters from the original are also omitted presumedly to let us see more of Scott walking around Italy as if he is a man on some mission.
The cast are fine but struggle to match the committed performances of the film. Dakota Fanning fares best by injecting a compassionate yet suspicious girlfriend. Johnny Flynn is OK but its hard to like him - a flaw which Jude Law combatted so perfectly in his award-nominated take. The Dickie character is just boring and not fun at all. Eliot Sumner's variation of Freddie is odd to say the least. Andrew Scott as the titular character is practically in every scene - 8 hours' worth of Scott really. There's a commitment to his performance for sure but it doesn't quite hit the mark. Damon's variation had depth - Scott's version is wooden, stiff and confusing. He walks around empty like some cyborg. Even the scenes he is supposed to be ravishing with intensity - he is monotone.
By episode 6, I was getting pretty tired of watching Scott walking around the dead of night through Italy, up and down stairs, across the street, staring into a window...
Not a total skip, but it's definitely a fast forward program to get through. There's about 3 hours of wasted time on indulgence.
Beautiful to look at, empty in its core.
Oscar winning director/writer Steven Zaillian gives us another incarnation of the fascinating Tom Ripley character most famously portrayed by Matt Damon in 1999's The Talented Mr. Ripley but also seen in several other films. This version though is all the 1999 version as Ripley (Andrew Scott) goes to Italy to buddy up to Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) and assume his identity. Ripley's sudden involvement irks Greenleaf's girlfriend Marge (Dakota Fanning) and friend Freddie (Eliot Sumner) who have their doubts.
The 1999 version was close to perfection as a taut, tantalizing thriller with excellent performances across the board. This version is slick, scrumptious to look at and has a visually arresting, stylish aesthetic. Having the story shown in black and white is initially distracting in early episodes as it feels pretentious but is used to interesting visual effect. Shades of Hitchcock is very evident. Beautiful cinematography, lush technical qualities, excellent music score make this a polished production.
The story wobbles though. Like a lot of streaming programs today, this doesn't justify 8-episodes. A lot of it is padding, long drawn-out scenes of characters doing absolutely nothing. Weird because it omits a lot from the story (which we get to later). There's episodes where the lead is just wandering around looking into nothing.
The story is also a bit of a mess. All for artistic freedom and creativity but it deviates a lot from the original story but doesn't really add anything in. The Dickie character is killed off very early and there's a few episodes just of Ripley doing nothing much. The Freddie character comes in one episode, disappears completely until they are back for their murder scene but by then we've had just one scene of the character so we're not invested in anything about this person. The disposing of Freddie's body takes a LONG time (a good 30 minutes) of Ripley driving around Italy to dispose a body. Again the padding is extraordinary. The Marge character disappears throughout and there is a lack of chemistry between her and Dickie only because they barely have any screen time together. Curious to why the 8-hours is focused on long, extensively drawn out scenes of the lead just walking by himself around Italy. A few characters from the original are also omitted presumedly to let us see more of Scott walking around Italy as if he is a man on some mission.
The cast are fine but struggle to match the committed performances of the film. Dakota Fanning fares best by injecting a compassionate yet suspicious girlfriend. Johnny Flynn is OK but its hard to like him - a flaw which Jude Law combatted so perfectly in his award-nominated take. The Dickie character is just boring and not fun at all. Eliot Sumner's variation of Freddie is odd to say the least. Andrew Scott as the titular character is practically in every scene - 8 hours' worth of Scott really. There's a commitment to his performance for sure but it doesn't quite hit the mark. Damon's variation had depth - Scott's version is wooden, stiff and confusing. He walks around empty like some cyborg. Even the scenes he is supposed to be ravishing with intensity - he is monotone.
By episode 6, I was getting pretty tired of watching Scott walking around the dead of night through Italy, up and down stairs, across the street, staring into a window...
Not a total skip, but it's definitely a fast forward program to get through. There's about 3 hours of wasted time on indulgence.
Beautiful to look at, empty in its core.
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