Based on the Patricia Highsmith novel, and a remake of Rene Clement’s Purple Noon, Minghella’s film is filled with beautiful imagery, although often at the cost of psychological complexity and depth. Tom Ripley (Matt Damon), a restroom attendant in Manhattan, befriends a wealthy man under false pretenses and, at the man’s behest, travels to Italy to lure his son back home. After ingratiating himself into the son’s life, Ripley’s moral flexibility and skill at impersonation lead to an attempted usurpation of the man’s identity. Damon’s Ripley is less threatening than Highsmith’s, and the film exposes Ripley’s homosexual desires more than the novel.