Movie · 1999 · Thriller, Crime, Drama · 2h 20m · R · English
Curator score: 7.6/10 (857.4K ratings)
How far would you go to become someone else.
Overview
Tom Ripley is a calculating young man who believes it's better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody. Opportunity knocks in the form of a wealthy U.S. shipbuilder who hires Tom to travel to Italy to bring back his playboy son, Dickie. Ripley worms his way into the idyllic lives of Dickie and his girlfriend, plunging into a daring scheme of duplicity, lies and murder.
Ratings
Curator score: 7.6/10
IMDb: 7.4/10
Letterboxd: 3.87/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 85%
Metacritic: 76
TMDB: 7.2/10
Director
Anthony Minghella
Production
Mirage Enterprises, Timnick Films
Cast
Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Cate Blanchett, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jack Davenport, James Rebhorn, Sergio Rubini, Philip Baker Hall, Celia Weston, Fiorello, Stefania Rocca, Ivano Marescotti, Anna Longhi, Alessandro Fabrizi, Lisa Eichhorn, Gretchen Egolf, Jack Willis, Frederick Alexander Bosche, Dario Bergesio
Where to watch
Paramount Plus Premium, Paramount Plus Essential
Curator Review
Verdict
A glossy, unsettling psychological thriller with strong performances, seductive atmosphere, and a slow-burn descent into identity theft, envy, and violence. It’s especially rewarding if you like elegant crime stories that feel both sunlit and poisonous.
Best for
psychological thrillers
stylish crime dramas
character studies about envy and identity
late-90s prestige cinema
films with queer subtext and erotic tension
Skip if
you want fast-paced plotting over mood
you dislike morally slippery protagonists
you prefer straightforward mysteries
you’re looking for a light travel movie
Overview
Anthony Minghella turns Patricia Highsmith’s story into a lush, anxious thriller where beauty is always tinged with dread. The Italian settings, jazz-soaked elegance, and immaculate period detail create a world that feels intoxicating at first, then increasingly claustrophobic as Tom’s lies multiply.
Worth noting
Matt Damon gives Tom a chilling mix of neediness, intelligence, and vacancy, while Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow bring glamour and fragility to the orbit around him. The film is less interested in whodunit mechanics than in watching a hungry outsider study privilege, performance, and desire until imitation becomes annihilation.
Bottom line
What lingers is the movie’s emotional unease: attraction curdles into envy, admiration into possession, and reinvention into self-erasure. It’s a polished studio thriller with a distinctly poisonous edge, and that tension is what makes it endure.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Isaac Feldberg (4★) · 27834 likes
call me by your name, and then i will also call myself by your name
owen (4★) · 14027 likes
fellas is it gay to steal your homie’s identity?
tobias (: (4★) · 13642 likes
starts out as call me by your name for straight people then becomes american psycho for gay people
aliciabr (4★) · 11513 likes
tbh if 1999 jude law called me boring I would apologize and immediately drown myself to not inconvenience him any further
#1 gizmo fan (4.5★) · 11382 likes
"Tom is talented. Tom is tender. Tom is beautiful. Tom is a mystery. Tom is not a nobody. Tom has secrets he doesn't want to tell me, and I wish he would. Tom has nightmares. That's not a good thing. Tom has someone to love him. That is a good thing. Tom is crushing me."
2005 · Drama, Romance, Thriller · 2h 4m · R · Curator 6.2/10 (406.2K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, fuboTV, Paramount Plus Premium, Paramount Plus Essential, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
A sleek story of social climbing, envy, and fatal self-preservation in an affluent world.
1998 · Crime, Drama, Thriller · 2h 1m · R · Curator 8.0/10 (147.9K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, MGM Plus, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
A morally corrosive crime story about ordinary people making one lie into a catastrophe.