“A Talent for Murder” (2026) adapts Australian Joanna Murray-Smith’s 2014 play, “Switzerland.” If you are going to make a Russian nesting doll of stories, at least one of them should be good. On his way to seal the deal with his publishing company’s author, Patricia Highsmith (Helen Mirren), Edward Ridgeway (Alden Ehrenreich), an editor, meets Clementine Harriet Balfour (Olivia Cooke), a woman five years away from being a heiress. When he finally arrives at Highsmith’s home, his business trip functions as a finishing school to get in touch with his dark side so he can live his best life. Live your best life, ignore the immensely talented cast and gorgeous production values, and skip this movie. I mentally checked out around thirty-seven minutes into the one hour forty-six-minute movie.
Ehrenreich is a victim of his own talent and success as a reliable character actor (“Oppenheimer”) who is malleable enough to become his character and not make himself such a showboat that he is recognizable on his off hours. He probably can still have a normal day even after he had an unfair rough start in the limelight with “Solo: A Star Wars Story” (2018). He uses that talent to play three roles that eventually merge into one person. As the editor, Edward, Ehrenreich feels more like a student in his first job and a fanboy than an editor who can handle one of the publishing company’s most demanding writers. When he is spinning yarns with Highsmith, he imagines himself as a Tom Ripley figure, sophisticated, immoral and confident. Eventually these personas merge so Edward can become a person who can swim with the sharks to get what he wants. Unfortunately, whatever antisocial personality traits get adopted just feels rote, monotonous and smooth like a dull brain, which is a writing problem. There are no stakes like the possibility of getting caught, turning off the mark, or losing status. Upward mobility is a given in these exercises, and it is as boring as Superman and Wolverine with no vulnerabilities, emotional or physical. Also, it is never believable that Edward has a mind that would interest Highsmith. His interest is undeniable, but memorization is not the same as bone deep relating, which is a ware that the story does not successfully sell. Ehrenreich and Mirren swap intellect for chemistry in a hot and heavy brainstorming tete a tete that only works if you are not wise to a street shell game. An additional demerit is deserved for the movie being about at least one queer person, but it is heavily heterosexual.
Mirren has been an icon for decades so playing Highsmith is the equivalent of light dusting around the house, but her performance feels theatrical, not lived in, even if a moviegoer goes into the theater unaware of the origins of “A Talent for Murder.” She gets to say some pithy, outrageous things that barely feel connected as an organic whole as if she is rushing to fit a lifetime of social errors into a moment. Most people interested in this movie are probably here for insight about Highsmith but will only get the equivalent of a listicle of fun facts about the author. Watching the movie feels like reading a Cliff Notes version with the glamorous Mirren wearing the costume and the wig but holding something back and never fully embodying her. The movie could have been called “Touched by a Highsmith” because she feels more like some magical figure who bestows ruthlessness on the meek and mousy, and if the recipient can withstand the amorality without breaking from reality, they can become the next psychopath to succeed in their business. Unlike her performance as Golda Meir, there is no sense of death crawling around the corner waiting to possess its next prey. It is all shallow, evocative stuff that is never fully realized though the atmosphere is so good that you will wisj it was better. Also, Mirren’s accent was anything but American. It is not bad, but it just is not American.
Cooke probably has the heaviest lift as a blank slate to possess without seeming two dimensional. Clementine is a thankless character. She has to be dumb enough to let Edward fool her whether in the real world or the fantasy one that Highsmith and Edward create, but smart and desirable enough not to wind up on the to do list of people to murder so Edward can get closer to whoever is standing in between him and the money. It never seems to occur to “A Talent for Murder” that Clementine would be rather convenient to toss aside, but compulsive heterosexuality demands a cover story. Cooke must utter lines that sound like an outdated idea of how the affluent spend their days, but she never breaks character and lives within the ridiculous space that she is meant to occupy. Cooke deserves better material, but she acts like it is better but never transcends it to make it better than it is, not that she should have to. She does her job well, but not so well that it is worth watching for her performance alone.
“A Talent for Murder” feels closer to “Little Women” than the twentieth first or even the late twentieth century. There are emails so it does not feel like the Nineties, which is when Highsmith died, but as if one of the creative liberties was to shift Highsmith’s demise to a later time so the production designer would not have to hustle and find period appropriate accessories. The real problem is that not one of these worlds, the present, the imagined or the near future, feel real. The characters are sketches, impressions, ideas, but not full-blooded, three-dimensional people whom you would recognize in a crowded room. Embodying Ripley in spirit is tricky, but not impossible as Matt Damon and Andrew Scott have proven, but they had rich source material to draw upon. This material is superficial, a connect the dots, paint by numbers Ripley, not the yearning desire, impossible hungry cypher who must hide his wants behind a sophisticated veneer. It is theoretical, not visceral and a lot of tell, no show, even with the Gothic touches in the warm and antiseptic, oozing and precise décor of the interior of Highsmith’s home. There is no bridge between Edward, a flat, two-dimensional man to imagined Edward, a flat, two-dimensional man who is styled better and actually goes for it.
It is hard to make writing interesting for the big screen. It is innately a solitary act. “A Talent for Murder” dresses up that exercise as an internal makeover for a wannabe anti-hero who needed encouragement to accept a woman’s invitation and green light. Weak sauce. Edward is not an interesting person, and there is nothing to root for since there are no obstacles. The agreement to write a sixth Ripley book is forgotten in the effort to get him rich, laid and heteronormative. The coexistence of Clementine’s aunt, Peggy (Juliet Stevenson), and her poorer, grasping friend, Kathryn (Brid Brennan), was far more intriguing. After all, the clumsy, imagined murders are so conspicuous, they beg for police intervention, but what if Ripley or “Saltburn” could have a parasitic relationship which did not require killing the host and the host welcomed it? What is happening there? It is quite queer indeed.
