A Talent for Murder review: Helen Mirren drives a chilly Highsmith thriller
Helen Mirren excels as a fictionalized Patricia Highsmith, but Anton Corbijn’s elegant thriller cannot fully land its layered plot.
By Poppy Nakagawa · Culture Writer
3 min read
This A Talent for Murder review finds Helen Mirren the sharpest weapon in Anton Corbijn’s polished literary thriller. Variety critic Guy Lodge says Mirren gives the film’s fictionalized Patricia Highsmith a biting, darkly funny presence, while the story’s elaborate machinery delivers less than its opening promises.
The film is not a straight biopic. It invents a 1995 encounter between the author of the Tom Ripley novels and a young visitor from a New York publishing house, then lets that confrontation blur into a Ripley-like fiction of its own.
What is A Talent for Murder about?
Alden Ehrenreich plays Edward Ridgeway, an emissary sent to Highsmith’s Swiss mountain home with a proposed contract for another Ripley book. Highsmith, played by Mirren, initially resists him, and their increasingly fraught exchange becomes the engine for a psychological game.
Joanna Murray-Smith adapted the screenplay from her own play, Switzerland. The movie also brings in Olivia Cooke as Clementine, a fellow American Edward meets on his journey. As Highsmith begins working through a possible new tale, the film cuts to Rome-set passages in which Ehrenreich and Cooke inhabit altered, more glamorous versions of their characters, according to Variety.
That shifting design is the point: the film places its imagined Highsmith alongside material that may be a story she is inventing, a version of events inspired by reality, or something harder to pin down. TIFF describes it as a confrontation between a literary agent and Highsmith, rather than an account of an actual episode in the writer’s life.
What works in A Talent for Murder?
Mirren is the clear draw. Lodge credits her with a severe, wry performance that gives the invented Highsmith real force. Ehrenreich’s work benefits from the film’s double-role setup, moving between the awkward publisher’s representative and a more polished, potentially dangerous figure in the Rome material.
Corbijn’s atmosphere is another plus. Variety highlights cinematographer Robbie Ryan’s contrasting look for the settings: Switzerland is cold and stark, while Rome leans into warmer, stylized noir. The review also praises Dickon Hinchliffe’s score and Dimitri Capuani’s production design, particularly the cluttered Highsmith home.
Where does the thriller fall short?
Variety’s main reservation is that the 105-minute running time leaves too little room for a story carrying several competing threads. Lodge judges the buildup more compelling than the conclusion, saying the film never brings its strands together with the precision expected from a Highsmith-inspired mystery.
That leaves A Talent for Murder as a sleek, performance-led thriller with an icy visual pull, even if its final shape is less satisfying than its premise. The film had its Toronto International Film Festival premiere, and Variety reported that Bleecker Street planned a U.S. release for Oct. 23.
This story draws on original reporting from Variety.