A Talent for Murder
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Rating: R
Run Time: 1 hour 46 minutes
Stars: Helen Mirren, Alden Ehrenreich
Writer: Joanna Murray-Smith (from her play)
Director: Anton Corbijn
Reviewed at the Toronto International Film Festival
The three necessary ingredients for a great movie, Alfred Hitchcock is reputed to have said, are, in order of importance: “The script, the script, and the script.”
I’m not one to take issue with the 20th century’s most influential director, but were Hitch still around I’d suggest he take a look at A Talent for Murder and then maybe reconsider. Working from a script that tries hard to sabotage itself, director Anton Corbijn has crafted a compelling, taut little literary thriller that fits his two totally game stars like a killer’s black glove.
Beyond that, this twisty mystery turns in on itself way too many times, leading to a wrap-up that is less head-spinning than head-scratching.
Based on a stage play by Joanna Murray-Smith – who also wrote this screenplay – the film drops us in the middle of an imagined encounter between real-life novelist Patricia Highsmith, creator of The Talented Mr. Ripley, and a representative of her publisher, charged with prodding Highsmith to churn out just one more Ripley novel.
Helen Mirren, still among our great screen chameleons, plays rumpled, growly Highsmith as a cross between a reclusive author and a Bond villain. Her lair is a remote Swiss chalet, where she angrily abandons one half-typed page after another, suffering what can only be described as terminal writer’s block. Into her solitude stumbles Edward, played with clumsy appeal by Alden Ehrenreich (cinematic heir to Harrison Ford in Solo: A Star Wars Story and costar of last year’s megahit Weapons). Edward has been ordered not to return to New York without Highsmith’s signature on a new contract. Highsmith says she’ll comply over her dead body. Or somebody’s dead body. (Not lost to Edward is the sobering fact that the last publisher’s rep to undertake this mission has disappeared without a trace.)
So far, so good: We’re about to hunker down for a two-character battle of wits, which may or may not also be a life-and-death game of cat-and-mouse. And, in fact, that’s exactly what Murray-Smith’s original stage play was: a tasty throwback to the great two-handers of playwright Anthony Shaffer (Sleuth) and Ira Levin (Deathtrap). Here, though, presumably because modern movie audiences cannot be trusted to sit still for nearly two hours of two talking heads – even heads as appealing as those of Mirren and Ehrenreich – the story is bloated to almost operatic proportions, with nearly a dozen characters appearing in flashback fantasies. Here, Edward is plopped into vignettes where he takes on the role of Highsmith’s murderous character, Rigby, raising nagging questions as to who in this drama is real, who is imaginary, and who might be straddling both realms.
So, here’s a confession you won’t get from a lot of film critics: I was completely flummoxed by the conclusion of A Talent for Murder. And I was feeling pretty stupid until I could not find anyone else at my Toronto International Film Festival screening who could say for sure how the movie ended.
Which makes it all the more remarkable that Mirren, as the chain-smoking, gun-collecting author, and Ehrenreich in his puzzling dual role, are both riveting. What’s more, director Corbijn, primarily a maker of music videos, masterfully utilizes claustrophobic close-ups and jarring juxtapositions to heighten the tension in a film that never fully explains itself.
A Talent for Murder may be akin to a gripping mystery novel that you discover, too late, has had its last five pages ripped out. Go ahead, bask in the sterling performances and sharp storytelling; then go home and write your own ending.
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