The talented Mr Ripley has come along way since Matt Damon's suavely murderous version wreaked mayhem among the American ex-pat community on the Italian Riviera.

Besides being John Malkovich, Ripley is older, wiser and living in splendour in a Palladian villa tastefully hung with Renaissance art.

It's game on when, while attending a party at the home of a British ex-pat neighbour, he chances to hear a remark disparaging his taste.

He fastens his sights on the offender - terminally-ill picture framer Joanthan Travanny (Dougray Scott), who is eking out a living with his wife Sarah (Headey) and little boy.

While any ordinary sociopath may settle for a mild act of retribution, Ripley devises a game far more subtle...and more deadly.

The means to revenge offer themselves up when Cockney criminal Reeves (Winstone) loutishly pitches up in Ripley's villa.

Reeves, who Ripley describes as a "condom-runner for the mob", is having trouble with Russian mafia queering his pitch in the Berlin club scene.

He needs an innocent - someone unknown in Germany - to take out his chief rival¿and Ripley suggests just someone who might fit the bill.

Cavani, who made her name directing The Night Porter, has concocted a far more complex and ethically ambiguous character than Damon's embryonic gamesman.

Malkovich's Ripley is a yoga-practicing aesthete, who takes calls while pedalling about his estate and aspiring to the perfect souffle. He detests murder "unless it's absolutely necessary."

However, his clinical ability to kill is never far below. "Take my watch," he tells Travanny ahead of a garotting episode in a railway carriage. "If it gets broken I'll kill everyone on this train."

The support is up to speed, with Scott breathing life into the dying Travanny while you can't really cast a better dodgy geezer than Winstone.

OK, so the plot needs a healthy suspension of disbelief but Malkovich seduces as the modern day Machiavelli. Game, set and match to Mr Ripley.

Tim Evans