To be young and carefree amid the blue waters and idyllic landscape of sun-drenched Italy in the late 1950's; that's the life Tom Ripley, the con artist, craves, and Dickie Greenleaf, the rich playboy, leads. When Dickie's father, a wealthy industrialist, commissions Ripley to bring his son home to America, Dickie and his beautiful expatriate girlfriend never suspect the dangerous extremes to which Ripley will go to make their lifestyle his own.