Get thee to a video store.
Ripley's Game is a better film than The Talented Mr. Ripley, and it's John Malkovich's best performance since Dangerous Liaisons. He makes a perfect Mephistopheles, choreographing evil like a maestro. But the film never draws us to cheer for him the way the Hannibal Lecter films do. He's like the alien in the Alien films, cold, calculating, completely devoid of conscience, like a dark angel who looks at goodness and innocence with a peculiar fascination and thus tears it to pieces in a detached fascination.
A note-perfect supporting cast features Dougray Scott in another brilliant performance as a man who makes one misstep and watches his world crumble around him.
Liliana Cavani is a writer/director I've not encountered before, but now I'm curious about her previous works. She's masterful. The cinematography and set design are enthralling. It's one of the most handsomely filmed dramas I've seen in years. I would love to see this on the big screen.
While the film doesn't have a whole lot to reveal besides what we've already come to expect from Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley, it is a much more successful manifestation of this character, and a sobering story about the sometimes incalculable wages of even the smallest sin.