Anton Corbijn’s A Talent For Murder is the kind of clever drama that plays with its audience’s expectations almost as much as the story keeps its characters guessing. The movie is a fictionalized account set in the last years of author Patricia Highsmith’s life, exploring the demands of a creative career, her interest in murder and human behavior, as well as the kinds of crime stories and mysteries she spun throughout her life. It’s not a flattering portrait of the artist, but a funhouse version that imagines her as a bit deranged, disillusioned with humanity, and possibly, a little bit dangerous.
Based on Joanna Murray-Smith’s stage play Switzerland, A Talent For Murder follows Edward (Alden Ehrenreich), a determined upstart in the publishing world. He needs to prove his worth by traveling to Zurich and convincing the enigmatic and cantankerous Highsmith (Helen Mirren) to write one more book featuring her star character, Ripley. Along the way, Edward meets a fellow American, Clementine (Olivia Cooke), who becomes an inspiration for the writing exercises he’s doing with Highsmith in order to convince her to agree to a new Ripley book. But first, he must survive the writer’s dastardly mind games set out to intimidate him.
To enjoy A Talent For Murder, it helps to know a little of Highsmith and her work, but if not, the movie will fill in the viewer on the basics, like Ripley and Strangers On A Train. In this reimagining, Highsmith is as a bitter alcoholic whose misanthropic view of the world has left her deeply isolated and suspicious of just about everyone. It’s also a role that offers Mirren plenty of opportunities to embrace her character’s dark predilections with a sense of glee, like fawning over a knife collection, needling Edward past the point of polite conversation, and musing about different ways to kill someone over breakfast. At one point she insists, “I don’t have time to threaten underlings!” but her actions suggest quite the opposite. Much of the movie feels like a cat-and-mouse game, where the mousy Edward must come up with a murder-mystery that fits the style of a Highsmith story and meets her high expectations.
While Mirren leans into her role as the villainous lesbian, Ehrenreich plays the dual parts of the nervous lit agent and a manifestation of Ripley in their made-up story. He meets the challenge with a help of a select few costume differences, like relaxed shirts and glasses for Edward and stylish sweaters and jackets for the dashing Mr. Ripley, on his way to murder a few relatives to secure an inheritance. The actor moves between the two different performances with relative ease, carrying himself differently and even adjusting how he looks at the other actors to convey both Edward’s insecurity and Ripley’s chilling nerve. At times, Edward borrows details from his own experiences, like a young heiress on the train to Zurich, to the point that the story within the movie blends almost too well as characters grow closer together. For Edward, imagining Ripley gives him a bit of a confidence boost, even as he brushes up against the same kind of classism Highsmith wrote about in her stories. While Highsmith remains resolutely stubborn in this story, after several rounds of sparring, Edward learns to argue back at the literary giant who’s only too ready to bury him in her backyard.
The most electric parts of A Talent For Murder is unquestionably the tête-à-tête between Edward and Highsmith. Corbijn can’t quite break out of the stageyness of feeling trapped in a house where the host is trying to scare off her guest, but he makes an effort to keep them moving throughout the home, from the living room to the study, the kitchen where rat poison is dangerously close to Edward’s plate of eggs to the bedroom where Edward wakes up with an unexplainable cut on his neck. The relationship between Edward and Clementine is a fun diversion, but it’s not as vital as his game of mental chess with Highsmith. The struggle to win the upper hand works almost like a thriller between the two, hashing it out in the study and in the mystery they’re devising on the fly. It’s a clever representation of the violence of the creative process that both Mirren and Ehrenreich relish.
Director: Anton Corbijn
Writer: Joanna Murray-Smith
Starring: Helen Mirren, Alden Ehrenreich, Olivia Cooke
Release Date: October 23, 2026
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