Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) is paid by American shipping tycoon Herbert Greenleaf (James Rebhorn) to fetch his son Dickie (Jude Law) back from Italy, where he is squandering his allowance in the sunshine with no intention of getting a job. Ripley accepts this mission under the pretence that he attended Princeton with Dickie, a deception gradually laid bare as they get to know each other. It soon becomes obvious that Tom is not taking the task seriously, but intends to enjoy himself for as long as he can in the company of Dickie and his girlfriend Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow). However, Tom's growing attachment to Dickie and the suspicions of Freddy (Philip Seymour Hoffman, a virtuoso thief of his every scene) begin to put a strain on their friendship, until Tom half-accidentally kills Dickie during a fight in a boat they have taken offshore. Rather than informing the authorities, Tom decides to pass himself off as Dickie (helped by some physical resemblance) and tells Marge that he has left her.

This story has been filmed before as Plein Soleil (1960) by the French director Rene Clement, and without doubt that film's Alain Delon offered a Ripley much closer to the one Highsmith had in mind than the one Minghella and Damon have come up with. However, Damon's Ripley is a masterly creation, as neurotic and pitiable as Delon's was hypnotically impassive and enigmatic. It's a great performance from an actor who has shown no signs of greatness up to this point, and it dominates the film.

Minghella is puzzlingly lax about details in a would-be thriller: there is no sense of a problem when Tom has to dispose of Dickie's body, or for that matter Freddy's when his interference leaves Tom with no choice but to kill him as well. Gabriel Yared's score beautifully evokes a life of ease in a hot climate, and the sadness of Ripley's yearnings, but is less successful at generating tension or momentum. They both fail to make this thriller thrill.

There's too much that is subtle and unusual, though, in the psychology of Minghella's vision to make this anything less than a worthwhile and memorable experience. Jude Law's rightly acclaimed turn is the perfect counterpart, in its combination of charm and chilling insouciance, to Damon's inner frailties, while Paltrow, overlooked in many reviews, actually offers a very committed portrait of neediness and anguish after her radiance in the first hour has faded. Cate Blanchett, meanwhile, is extremely impressive as usual in the smaller role of the flighty bystander Meredith who falls for Ripley-as-Dickie.

Thanks to all of their remarkable contributions and Minghella's determination to make this a character-driven piece, The Talented Mr Ripley is very nearly a great film. It is story-telling of an unconventional, un-Hollywood kind, and seems to have an un-Hollywoodish disdain for excitement and incident, wonderfully peopled and placed, but lacking the last degree of visual and dramatic flair.

Tim Robey