TIFF Review: A Talent for Murder Doesn’t Live Up to Patricia Highsmith’s Legacy

Old ladies need movies as festivals like TIFF need world premieres. So is the case with A Talent for Murder, which can be applied to a subgenre known as Mirrenslop. Other highlights (or rather lowlights) include the Israeli hagiography Golda and, like that film, this may get a distributor its one token Oscar nomination in the makeup category. As such, Mirren is done up to play one of America’s greatest writers, Patricia Highsmith. Best known for The Talented Mr. Ripley, an undeniable masterpiece, the author used crime fiction to explore what feels like all of human experience. Would she approve of this heavily fictionalized account of her last year on earth? Likely not. 

In 1995, publishing-house employee Edward (Alden Ehrenreich) is sent to Switzerland to convince Highsmith (Mirren) to write one last Ripley book. The aging, heavy-drinking, curmudgeonly Highsmith is far from convinced. Edward’s knowledge of her work and persistence in at least helping her craft an idea eventually win her over, though. Or rather: when he opens up to her about himself, his hardscrabble childhood, dead parents, and even the pretty rich girl (Olivia Cooke) he met on the train there, she realizes there’s material for a perfect murder story. What if Edward, for example, wanted to integrate himself into that girl on the train’s rich family? From here, fact and fiction begin to blend, though never in any way too disorienting or thought-provoking.  

Taking a very silly concept and playing it relatively straight, A Talent for Murder is fairly predictable, if watchable. The helmer, Joy Division and U2 photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn, once seemed a promising director, but as of late appears content with nice-enough-looking hackwork. The dramatizations of an unwritten Ripley novel are set in nice Swiss locations, recalling his work on the watered-down Melville riff The American, if quite far from that film’s deliberate arthouse pacing. I guess one has to applaud him for giving up any pretensions. 

You’ll probably know what territory Corbijn is treading by the fact that there are at least three jump scares involving Highsmith appearing out of nowhere. Likewise, she’s constantly spouting one-liners sure to get the audience’s easy-laughers. Amidst Mirren’s (admittedly not-boring) glazed ham acting, Ehrenreich’s role emphasizes just how steadily his scrunched, handsome face contains both a likable leading man and sinister killer. You remember why he was earning comparisons to Jack Nicholson when he appeared on the scene with Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro in 2009. It’s just a shame the dynamic between these two feels so shallow at the end of the day.

For whatever it’s worth, A Talent for Murder is the definition of a competent mediocrity. Yet Highsmith’s oeuvre—which did everything to transcend the early equivalent of “airport” novels through searing explorations of misogyny, class, and the unknowable quality of every person—was anything but. She deserves better than specialty-box-office filler.

A Talent for Murder premiered at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival and opens on October 23.