Jessica Thompson

Absolutely fabulous. Restrained, sophisticated, rife with symbolism, a masterful soundtrack, and gripping. Visually delicious and the treatment of 1960's Italy is absolutely perfect. (I've lived there and it made me ache to return.) Gritty and quite dark. Cloistered, tense and suffocating it follows our pathological con man Ripley, with his nearly flat affect, slowly through a series of worsening setbacks as he must narrowly maneuver his way through the con. he begins the film as an amateur scammer and through a series of lucky coincidences finds himself in the position to become a full-blown man and identity thief. The director does an excellent job of establishing Ripley's psychology and utter lack of empathy for other human beings in a way that assures you he will exploit the dark opportunities that arise. The acting is nuanced and believable, and keeps you on the edge of your chair as Ripley must outsmart each turn of events. The film slowly lingers on each hyperreal detail yet refuses to let up tension as things spiral downward. Those that are complaining about the age of the actors I think are missing the intention of the film and the brilliance of it. Dickey is intensely unlikeable, his face is flawed instead of gorgeoys, he is lost, and unlovely, and he hasn't many redeeming characteristics from his lack of talent to his entitlement. Marge is a vulnerable yet suspicious and irritating threat to Ripley, and we wonder throughout the series if she will meet at a violent end. This is not a saccarine Hollywood flick, or spring break romp through Europe, it is a subtle, slow, grinding, tense, beautiful, gripping and darkly funny study of psychopathy and murder, made for intelligent viewers. There are so many levels of conversation like the rich yet accessible and poetic symbolism, the whispering brooding paintings and the groaning boats and buildings, ominously seething beneath the surface.

I was so excited to support Daniel Glover because I think he's wonderful. They put a lot of money into the sets and some great auxiliary actors and the two leads do OK with their acting. I would say the main thing that holds this show back is the action scenes are absolutely terrible and unbelievable. The other thing is that most of the series is just scenes of the two of them fighting in an extremely whiny annoying way. There's an entire episode of them in counseling. They are often petty and childish and making stupid decisions. To its credit, I am still watching though, its watchable.

The shoot them up scenes are fun and I enjoy Daniel's acting and the chemistry between them is... barely passable acceptable. However there's some really painful gaps in logic like he supposed to have a military training and he points a gun at her in the 1st episode while he is looking at a gun which is something that nobody with any gun safety training would do. But after episode two or so the entire show is about the two of them fighting and they fight at length and they become extremely childish with each other. I'm not sure why Daniel has cast himself in a role where he becomes whiny and passive aggressive. I'm fully prepared to overlook the gaps in logic but these nonstop arguments get extremely tiresome, and I think I'm gonna have to cut out of the series.