Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
Tom Ripley, an American who deals in forged art, is slighted at an auction in Hamburg by picture framer Jonathan Zimmerman. When Ripley is asked by gangster Raoul Minot to kill a rival, he suggests Zimmerman, and the two, exploiting Zimmerman's terminal illness, coerce him into being a hitman.
Wenders' adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley's Game is a hypnotic neo-noir that stands apart through its distinctive blend of European art cinema sensibility and American genre conventions. Dennis Hopper's unconventional casting as Ripley — against the suave archetype — pays off brilliantly, and Bruno Ganz delivers a quietly devastating performance as the doomed Zimmerman. Robby Müller's cinematography is exceptional, saturating Hamburg and Paris with a melancholy, amber-tinted dread that feels wholly singular. The film's transatlantic duality — its collision of American pop iconography with German New Wave introspection — gives it a novelty that remains striking decades later. The plot meanders in places and the mechanics of the hitman scheme strain credibility, and the ending, while thematically resonant, dissipates tension somewhat ambiguously rather than landing with full conviction.