Ripley's Game · reception & legacy
2002 · Liliana Cavani
How Ripley's Game has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
It premiered at Venice in 2002 then infamously went straight to cable and DVD in the US — no theatrical release at all — before Roger Ebert loudly championed it as one of the best unreleased films he'd seen. Two decades on, it's widely treated as the great overlooked Ripley film.
What's debated
The perennial fan debate: who is the definitive screen Tom Ripley — Malkovich here, Matt Damon, Alain Delon, Dennis Hopper, or Andrew Scott?
Its footprint
It's a fixture of every 'best straight-to-video film ever' and 'movies that deserved a theatrical release' list, and a mandatory stop on any ranked tour of the Ripley adaptations — the same novel Wim Wenders had already filmed as The American Friend (1977).
Where it stands
A cult object among Highsmith devotees and Malkovich fans — the 'actually, the best Ripley movie' pick that cinephiles love to deploy.