A Talent for Murder review – Helen Mirren is a viperous Patricia Highsmith in hit-and-miss thriller

The restrictions of Covid led to an inevitable rise in safely contained chamber-piece movies, where a handful of characters find themselves in a usually remote house, dialogue taking obvious precedence over action. There were some highlights, such as Kevin Williamson’s timely slasher Sick, and some considerable low points, such as Sam Levinson’s vapid drama Malcolm & Marie, but while we had plenty of them, none of them rivalled some of the greatest and smartest pre-pandemic examples. The very best tended to be based on plays and quite often starred Michael Caine.

He was in Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth, which went from Tony to Oscar success back in the 1970s, and then the arguably even better Deathtrap in the decade after, which Sidney Lumet adapted from Ira Levin’s deviously plotted play. In between there was also an under-seen TV movie called One of My Wives Is Missing, based on 60s play Trap for a Single Man, which was notably lesser but still delivered a similarly specific brand of twisty, talky thrills. There would be secrets, surprises, reversals and usually at least one dead body by the end of it, a subgenre entirely indebted to the work of Agatha Christie (who reportedly loved Sleuth on stage so much that she dedicated a picture of herself to be hung in the house used in the big screen adaptation). The bar is therefore held rather high, a puzzle that requires an ingenious level of writing that needs to be smart without smug and shocking without feeling cheap.

A Talent for Murder is an admirable, and rare, effort to bring that formula back, a biggish swing that almost lands. It’s again based on a play, and like both Sleuth and Deathtrap it’s based around a writer who weaves their way through a thriller plot of their own making. Standing in for Caine is Helen Mirren playing a fictionalised version of Patricia Highsmith, a famously cantankerous and bigoted author who hated to be around people and, like most misanthropes, preferred animals instead. We meet her in 1995 as she drinks herself to death in a remote Switzerland home, no more books to be written, a tank full of snails and a barely seen cat to keep her company. Ambitious editor Edward (Alden Ehrenreich) is hoping to change that, the latest lamb to be sent to the slaughter all the way from New York. He’s been tasked with getting Highsmith not just to write another new book (most of which have been “inconsistent”, as he later says) but, instead, another Tom Ripley caper. The Talented Mr Ripley remains her most beloved work, and he believes he can use his adoration of her and her work to get her back to the typewriter.

But Highsmith is not going to take the advice of an “underling” and won’t become a “hooker for hire” like so many other authors. In between making antisemitic and racist jabs (the film goes a little easy on her vilest of views), she makes him dance before finally putting him to the test: if he can help plot a worthy murder with her then she will bring Ripley back. We enter a film within a film as Ehrenreich plays a far more sleek American preying on a wealthy heiress (Olivia Cooke) in Rome, a character he concocts based on a woman he met on the train journey to meet Highsmith. After bumping into the real woman once again, we also follow his real efforts to romance her.

It’s three strands and the structure makes Ehrenreich the true lead with Mirren off-screen far more than we’d like. The script, adapted by Joanna Murray-Smith from her own play, isn’t quite as deliciously nasty as it seems to think it is, especially when trying to show Highsmith at her caustic worst. Her worldview is hateful but in ways more broadly obvious than not (“Happiness is overrated,” she says like an emo teen) and I craved for more cutting jabs, skin barely grazed (where is Patrick Marber when you need him?). Mirren is a hoot and it marks a more substantial challenge for the actor who, whether dying for Kate Winslet’s son or solving an easily solvable murder with Celia Imrie, hasn’t been put to the test for quite some time. It’s also another fantastic opportunity for Ehrenreich, whose earlier failed attempt to become Hollywood’s next best thing has ultimately worked out in his favour. Rather than being stuck in the Star Wars universe or leading other vacant franchise entries, he’s leaned into his sinister good looks. He was excellent as a bratty banker in Fair Play, an alcoholic cop in Weapons and a toxically direct bachelor on stage in Becky Shaw. Ehrenreich can easily charm while also playing unknowable and unsettling so well, a convincing enough audition for the unavoidable Ripley reboot.

The idea of the pair inventing a murder together is a fun one, with lines between fact and fiction blurring, but there’s not enough back-and-forth in these scenes as we watch the creation of a story far too generic to bear Highsmith’s name. We disappear into the fabricated world for too-long stretches without all that much at stake, and I wanted to see more of the process and how that affects what we then see. Director Anton Corbijn, making his first narrative film since 2015’s Life, is more comfortable trying to emulate the gloss of a fake Ripley in Italy than he is with turning Highsmith’s home into anything other than a stagey, atmosphere-free location (admittedly, Olivia Wilde’s gloriously well-crafted dinner party comedy The Invite recently raised the bar), and despite her memorabilia and armoury of weapons, nothing really comes alive.

We’re being led down a road of twists and turns but none really jolt or surprise as much as we expect, the rug never really being pulled, just gently tugged at. Mirren and Ehrenreich are a formidably talented duo, and I can’t imagine anyone else lifting this quite so well, but they’re not given anything truly vicious enough to work with. Knives are plunged, drinks are spiked and guns are fired but A Talent for Murder is lacking in real blood.

• A Talent for Murder is premiering at the Toronto film festival and will be released in US cinemas on 23 October, in the UK on 20 November and in Australia on 26 December