I really didn't want to see this movie. First, because everything Matt Damon did after Good Will Hunting was downhill, and second, I never liked the epic, yet unpersonal, proportions of Minghella's English Patient (I was hoping Fargo would win that year). Turns out, Damon makes other actors better (see Ed Norton in Rounders), and that's exactly what he does with Jude Law in this movie. Damon is Tom Ripley, a professional liar and impersonator, a profession that he openly admits in the first scenes of the movie. Chance would lead him to meet Dickie Greenleaf (Law), a renegade son of a ridiculously rich industrialist. Dickie lives the good life in southern Italy with his girlfriend Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow), to which he is not particularly faithful. The three of them develop a seemingly close friendship, but Ripley soon discovers that he cannot harness the wind that is Dickie. He tangles himself in a web of lies and crimes, and keeps you guessing at the edge of your seat till the very end.

What you're guessing is whether he would get away with stuff. I found myself rooting for the bad guy, and I attribiute that partly to the loveable nature of talented Mr. Damon, but mostly to the gripping script that makes 140 minutes fly by in a hurry. The two logical parts of the movie are equally fast-paced, wonderfully directed and skillfully acted. As much as the first part belongs to Law, who is the unavoidable center of each scene, the second lets Damon work his magic with that 100-watt smile. The secrets of his character are revealed to us on a need-to-know basis, and I don't agree completely with its development. It would make the movie more believable, if not commercially successful, if he remained ruthless and cold hearted. His nightmares, guilt, even his homosexuality, seem like they don't belong here.

But if you don't approach this movie as a drama, but as a thriller, you're in for a treat. Mr. Ripley has some characteristics of Hitchcock's classics, such as Dial M for Murder, and the great master of suspense was not imitated, but almost quoted. After all, the concept of the omniscient audience shivering over the faith of the main protagonist, regardless of the side of the law he occupies, is so very Hitchcockian. You are the ones who know everything all the time, but that doesn't reduce the tension of the movie not one bit. Minghella's style is almost unnoticable, which is good. He lets the actors shine, and they certainly do, but none more than delicious Cate Blanchett. Like an annoying outsider to the main plot, she becomes more and more important part of it as the movie winds down. Each scene she's in radiates her unique charm that eclipses even the one of her Academy Award-winning co-star.