A Talent for Murder (2026) reviews

The Fuzzy Mushroom take on A Talent for Murder

By Fuzzy Mushroom · Updated 10 November 2026 · The Pros 72 · The Punters 67 · Spore Score 70 · How we write our takes

Where The Pros and The Punters land

A Talent for Murder is a mostly clear case. The Pros give it 72, The Punters 67, and the Spore Score is 70. Neither side is gushing and neither side is cross. Critics enjoy the games it plays with Patricia Highsmith's life and fiction. Audiences enjoy Helen Mirren having a whale of a time, but some find it talky and a touch theatrical, which makes sense once you know where it came from.

What it is

This is not a straight biopic. Director Anton Corbijn, the photographer turned film-maker behind Control and A Most Wanted Man, works from a script by Joanna Murray-Smith, adapted from her own 2014 stage play Switzerland. Mirren plays Highsmith in her final years in Switzerland. Alden Ehrenreich is Edward Ridgeway, a young editor sent from New York to persuade her to write one more Tom Ripley novel. As his visit drags on, his charm starts to look less like publishing and more like something out of one of her books. Ehrenreich also plays Ripley himself, and that double casting tells you the film is happy to blur the line between the writer and the monster she made.

What it does well

Mirren is the reason to buy a ticket. Her Highsmith is prickly, funny and frightening, a woman who has spent a lifetime thinking about how to get away with murder and is not about to be outwitted by a young man in a good suit. Ehrenreich, best known as Han Solo in Solo, matches her with a smooth, slippery menace. Olivia Cooke and Juliet Stevenson add colour in the parts filmed away from the house. Corbijn's eye for a frame is as strong as ever: shot in Rome, London and Switzerland, it is cool, handsome and full of shadows.

Where it wobbles

The stage roots show. Long stretches are two people in a room, trading barbs and testing each other, and a few attempts to open it out feel bolted on. If you know Highsmith's real biography, you will notice how freely it rewrites her, which some viewers love and others find a cheat. The twists are clever rather than shocking.

Who it is for

Highsmith readers, fans of The Talented Mr Ripley in any of its versions, and anyone who enjoys a sharp two-hander with a great actor at its centre. If you want a full-blooded thriller with chases and bodies, look elsewhere.

Context

Production began in Rome in January 2025. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2026 under its new title (it was developed as Switzerland) and opened in US cinemas on 23 October 2026 through Bleecker Street. Highsmith wrote five Ripley novels between 1955 and 1991, and the film's whole premise is a publisher's fantasy of a sixth.

The Fuzzy Mushroom verdict

Worth a watch, with a Spore Score of 70. A clever, wicked little chamber piece carried by Mirren. Go for her, stay for the games, and do not expect a history lesson.