YMMV / The Talented Mr. Ripley

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Rather than a crime thriller, the film is a character-focused drama that is all about humanizing Ripley.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The opera shown in the film is the end of Act II from Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin. In this particular scene, Lenski challenged his friend Onyegin for a duel over Olga, who had been engaged to Lenski at that time. Lenski was mortally wounded, and Onyegin departed Russia for a self-imposed exile.
  • Tom kills Freddie with a bust of the Roman emperor Hadrian who had a gay lover who was killed.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In the novel, reference is made to Dickie being portrayed as a "combination of Paul Gauguin and Errol Flynn". Jude Law would also make a cameo appearance as Flynn in The Aviator (which also had Cate Blanchett in it).
  • Ripley jokes that when Dickie wears his glasses, he looks like Clark Kent, and without them, he looks like Superman. Jude Law was up for the role of Clark Kent/Superman in an ultimately-unproduced Batman vs. Superman project in the 2000s, and even got to try on the Superman suit.
• It Was His Sled: Ripley kills Dickie and assumes his identity.
• Nightmare Fuel: The whole second half of the film. Ripley's whole predicament just keeps on getting tenser and more grimly farcical until he literally has to keep six different parties from running into each other for risk of exposure... all for telling a little white lie.
• One-Scene Wonder: Philip Baker Hall as Alvin MacCarron ("I don't care for B.S. I don't care to hear it, I don't care to speak it"), the no-nonsense private detective hired by Dickie's father, even if he doesn't know the entire truth about Tom.
• Tear Jerker: The ending. Tom Ripley has escaped suspicion for murdering and impersonating Dickie Greenleaf, and is on a boat to Athens with his lover Peter [who is the first person to love him for being Tom], when he runs into Meredith, who thinks Tom is Dickie, and coincidentally knows Peter. Worse, she's on the boat with her entire family, who will notice if she disappears - Peter has no-one but Tom. Resolved, Tom goes to Peter in his room and asks Peter to tell him "some nice things about Tom Ripley." Baffled, but playing along, Peter does so as Tom cuddles up to him. Cut to Tom entering his own room, miserable and shaken, as Peter's list (which makes it very clear that Tom's love for him is mutual) goes on in voiceover - and then changes to the sounds of Tom sobbing as he chokes Peter to death.

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