Saltburn – 0 stars

Very similar to The Talented Mr. Ripley, but without any of the care, build, patience, intelligence, or style of that flick. In Ripley, we are wary of yet sympathetic to Tom (Matt Damon), the working class nobody who insinuates himself into the shine of the rich and beautiful. When the tanned god Dickie (Jude Law) casts him aside, we feel for Tom. We don’t endorse the sociopath’s actions, but as Tom grows closer to capture, we guiltily root for him. When Tom’s desires draw him into greater malfeasance, against our judgment, we thrill to see if he will actually get away with it.

Here, our new Tom Ripley is Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), a modern day loser at Oxford who gloms on to his own Dickie, Felix (Jacob Elordi), a rich kid whose monied and titled family lives in a castle on Saltburn estate. After ingratiating himself with Felix, Oliver is invited to Saltburn where he negotiates Felix’s ridiculous caricature of an upper-class family, his own increasing desire for Felix, and the fact that he is disposable to these people when, like Ripley, he is trying to make himself indispensable.

Unlike Tom, however, we don’t root or care for Oliver. He’s a furtive creep. Even when he overhears the rich kids at school or Felix’s family malign him, our natural pang of sympathy immediately gives way to caution. The guy smells of wrong from the get-go and because of it, we have no skin in the game, either about Oliver’s fate or the cartoon characters around him.

What follows is a wretched flick infatuated with its own provocativeness. It’s not very funny, though it is labeled a black comedy. It’s not very edgy, though it is sexually perverse. It’s not very smart, unless rich people one level removed from The Howells on Gilligan’s Island saying grotesque things is your idea of smart. In Ripley, the rich were dazzling. Any condescension was barely perceptible, and accordingly, all the more cutting to Tom. You can see why Tom wants in and how much it stings. Here, Oliver yearns for a world populated by dolts and cretins, so, who cares?

The picture is also repetitive in the extreme. Basically, every scene is Oliver made uncomfortable until he becomes morose. When Oliver gets a win, another cliché rattling his/her jewelry reminds him for the umpteenth time that HE DOES NOT BELONG.

After running the tired plot into a very tight and boring corner, the end lapses into inanity (SPOILER: Oliver kills them all in a manner a mall cop would suss out as foul play inside of a minute; apparently, the British police force is trained by Magilla Gorilla).

But no one is on to Oliver because it’s a shit screenplay so far up its own ass that it need not deign to generate interest, draw characters, or construct a sensible narrative.

The near-end, where we flashback to Oliver’s machinations previously hidden to us, ala’ M. Night Shymalan, is such a clumsy and pathetic attempt at bringing order to this mess I almost felt for the creator.           

But then, I realized Saltburn is from the writer director of Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell), another infantile, impossible crapfest which got the critics to swooning.

On Amazon Prime.