★★½ (2½ out of 4)
Helen Mirren is an acting miracle worker. But she can’t save “A Talent for Murder,” now in theaters, from its own worst decisions. When she disappears from the film, which is way too often, momentum stalls and boredom seeps in. But, oh, when Mirren commands the screen, all is right with the toxic world.
That world belongs to Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995), the Texas-born crime novelist best known for creating the character of Tom Ripley in five novels, which were turned into such successful films as “Purple Noon” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” Her work was influenced by Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Kafka, and the existentialism of Sartre and Camus. James Patterson she was not. Amoral characters like Ripley usually triumphed by living comfortably in sin. As Highsmith once wrote, "Neither life nor nature cares whether justice is ever done or not."
“A Talent for Murder” picks up Highsmith, as portrayed by Mirren, near the end of her life when her affairs with women had waned and she lived solo in Switzerland with her pet snails and a penchant for terrifying outsiders who dared to knock on her door. Highsmith collected lethal weapons (knives were a favorite) as a hobby, like normal folks collected stamps.
Helen Mirren is great, but Patricia Highsmith would have hated this movie for trivializing her anarchic art.
Enter the gifted Alden Ehrenreich (“Fair Play,” “Oppenheimer” and the young Han Solo in an aborted redo of the “Star Wars” franchise) as Edward Ridgeway, a literary wannabe from her New York publishing house, assigned to persuade her to betray her principles by a sixth and final Ripley novel, an assured bestseller as opposed to her recent books. She nearly shoots him on sight. She keeps arsenic and other poisons in her kitchen to make him think twice about eating the breakfast she’s just prepared.
So far, so deliciously depraved. Mirren plays off Ehrenreich’s expert portrait of malignant inexperience with such unhinged mischief that they’re a depraved delight to watch. This is all fanciful, you understand. “A Talent for Murder,” directed by Dutch photographer turned film director Anton Corbijn (“Control,” “The American”) from a script that Joanna Murray-Smith adapted from her 2014 play “Switzerland,” is having fictional fun with the facts of Highsmith’s life. Fine by me. I stayed intrigued even when Ridgeway accepts Highsmith’s challenge to help her concoct a murder plot so ingenious that she couldn’t resist writing Ripley back into the murder game.
That plot concerns Ridgeway’s chance encounter at a railway station—he was on his way to visit Highsmith—with an American heiress named Clementine Balfour, played by a promisingly frisky Olivia Cooke (Alicent Hightower in HBO’s “The House of the Dragon” franchise). Only two other relatives stand in the way of Clementine inheriting everything. So what if Ridgeway, as Ripley 2.0—their names even sound alike—can bump off the obstacles to real wealth? Auspicious, right?
Wrong. This is where the movie gets bogged down in scenes of Ridgeway morphing into his own version of Ripley. As his relationship with Clemintine develops on treks to Italy, the imagined crimes and Ridgeway’s own life begin to overlap. What starts as a gimmick (Highsmith needs help concocting a plot? Really?) becomes a clumsy psychological contest over whether Highsmith is writing another fictional murderer or helping create a real one.
Not buying it. Sorry. Ehrenreich and Cooke are pretty to look at, but their charm can only go so far. Worse, Mirren is absent from these scenes, which is the creative equivalent of unplugging the film’s only power source. My mind started drifting, and I’m guessing yours will, too. The filmmakers have effectively erased Highsmith from her own story and removed the main reason for seeing the film in the first place.
Mirren does return for wrap-up, but it’s too late to rescue a movie that commits the unforgivable sin of watering down Highsmith for commercial consumption. What an insult to her vibrant, viperous spirit. I can’t speak for Highsmith (no one can), but I think she would have hated “A Talent for Murder” for trivializing her anarchic art into a conventional movie.