This review may contain mild spoilers.

Who is Tom Ripley? It's a question that hangs over "Ripley," Steven Zaillian's chilly, chilling, uber-stylish adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's "The Talented Mr. Ripley." This material has been tackled on screen before — once as the 1960 French film "Purple Noon," and even more prominently in 1999 via Anthony Minghella's "The Talented Mr. Ripley." Zaillian, who wrote and directed the entire new Netflix series, seems to go to great lengths to distance his adaptation from Minghella's, even if they're essentially the same story. While the 1999 film was awash in bright, sunny colors, Zaillian and cinematographer Robert Elswit employ noir-tinged black-and-white cinematography that often looks straight out of a silent German expressionist film.

Minghella's film also leaned into the homoeroticism at the center of the Ripley character, but the Tom Ripley here, played in a brilliant calculating manner by Andrew Scott, feels almost sexless. One...