“Everybody has one talent, what’s yours ?”

Tom Ripley has three – lying, impersonating voices and forging signatures.

Set in the late 1950s, a casual lie gets Ripley hired by a rich industrialist to go to Italy and convince his errant son to return home to the States.

Once in Europe, instead of convincing Dickie Greenleaf to return, Ripley befriends him and his fiancé and gets drawn into their decadently rich lifestyle. A lifestyle Ripley enjoys so much he would do anything to maintain.

Based on Patricia’s Highsmith’s book of the same title, the first of five Ripley novels, the movie is adapted by Anthony Minghella, who also directs.

Minghella, fresh from the English Patient, which he also adapted and directed, heads a crew with more Academy Awards (or at least nominations) than you can shake a stick at.

Matt Damon (who has an Oscar, though not for acting) shines in the title role, but the true highlight is Jude Law (nominated for Best Supporting Actor in this year’s Awards for this performance), who gives an absolutely enthralling portrayal as Dickie. The women, Gwyneth Paltrow (Oscar winner) and Cate Blanchett (Oscar Nominee for “Elizabeth”) do little more than sit around and look pretty, whatever they say about the depth of their characters in interviews.

While long – over two hours, and rather draggy in the first half, this movie is disturbingly chilling, as Mingella’s screenplay pushes alienation and envy to its fatal conclusion. Ripley is not a killer, nowhere near the serial psychos that star in every third movie nowadays, and yet he murders, because things conspire in a way that forces him to, because his madness – if you can call desperation madness – makes him continue where others would stop…