A Talent for Murder review
By Joel Humphries · Watched 10.22.26
★★★ 3 / 5
Spoiler-free review
A prickly premise—Helen Mirren’s Patricia Highsmith toying with an ambitious American agent in her Swiss lair—ought to hum with nasty wit, and the early volleys suggest it might. Mirren delivers, flinty and formidable, yet the cat-and-mouse never sharpens into the clever, charmingly poisonous duel it promises. Alden Ehrenreich goes for broke and reminds you he’s a real actor, selling a morally slippery striver with ease. I kept waiting for the film to get meaner, smarter, or funnier. It’s a solid, single-sitting watch—Sunday-afternoon streaming territory, not a theatrical priority.
Full review — contains spoilers
I wanted A Talent for Murder to be more fun than it was. Helen Mirren plays Patricia Highsmith, the author of the Tom Ripley novels, as an unpleasant recluse who knows a great deal about murder and enjoys making her visitor uncomfortable. Alden Ehrenreich plays the American literary agent sent to Switzerland to persuade her to write another Ripley book. He wants a contract. She wants to fuck with him. That should have been a pretty entertaining arrangement.
Mirren does a good job, as she always does. Highsmith isn’t supposed to be likable, but I wanted her games to have more charm or wit. She has knives, guns, poisons and a considerable interest in how somebody might use them. There’s plenty of material for a nasty little back-and-forth between these two people, neither of whom is necessarily operating from the purest motives. The film just never made that exchange as smart or interesting as I wanted it to be.
Ehrenreich goes all in. He embodies this ambitious, morally questionable guy trying to get something out of a woman who isn’t inclined to cooperate. He was once positioned as a potential major Hollywood star, and that never quite developed the way people seemed to expect. But he’s a good actor, and I thought he did solid work with what he was given here.
The early exchanges promise more than the movie ultimately delivers. I kept waiting for it to become sharper, funnier or more compelling, and it never quite got there. I liked it enough for one viewing, but nothing about it made me want to go back.
This is solid, but it feels like a Sunday-afternoon streaming movie to me. The performances are worth watching, and it’s good enough to pass the time. I just didn’t find it impressive enough to make a particular effort to see it in a theater.