The film received positive critical reviews, with a 92% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 24 reviews. Roger Ebert added "Ripley's Game" to his "Great Movies" list, calling it "the best of the four" Ripley films he had seen (the other three being "Purple Noon", "The American Friend", and "The Talented Mr. Ripley") and Malkovich "precisely the Tom Ripley I imagine when I read the novels," praising what he felt to be "one of most brilliant and insidious performances; a study in evil that teases the delicate line between heartlessness and the faintest glimmers of feeling." Ebert criticized the decision not to release the film theatrically in North America, writing: "The failure to open it theatrically was a shameful blunder."