Match Point (2005)

Written and Directed by Woody Allen

Partial Cast
Jonathan Rhys Meyers......Chris Wilton
Brian Cox.............................Alec Hewett
Penelope Wilton.................Eleanor Hewett
Emily Mortimer..................Chloe Hewett Wilton
Scarlett Johansson..............Nola Rice

The second half of this review is FULL of spoilers. I'll warn you ahead of time though, but use caution if you haven't seen the film yet. It requires some suspense to be fully enjoyed.

I feared this movie would be a disappointment. It wasn't, not really. I didn't love it, though. I found it thoroughly mean spirited and lacking in human kindness. I'd heard some glowing one-line reviews, but I'd tried not to read anything about the picture. This is definitely "late" Woody Allen. It deals with issues of marriage and fidelity and the approach is close to humorless. Funny lines are spoken but the tone of the film is grave and dour.

The hero (later to become the anti-hero) is played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who I thought was supposed to be something of a fox. I whispered to my companion, "He's not very good looking." She agreed and said that he can be handsome or ugly depending on the film. That's probably true--he has one of those flexible faces. In this film, however, he was not handsome.

Early in the film he embarks on a mild campaign of self-improvement, reading Dostoevsky (foreshadowing) and listening to opera. You don't know whether his efforts are sincere or calculated. In fact, the answer to that question is never resolved though I think it's easy to lean towards calculated, both answers are possible.

Chris seems to be getting along swimmingly with an upper-class girlfriend and her family when he meets the woman who threatens to be his undoing, one Miss Scarlett Johansson. She is engaged to his girlfriend's brother. Their meeting is played nicely over a ping-pong table. Tennis pro that he is, he stomps her and she handles it...smoothly.

I expected not to like Nola, the character Johansson plays, because previews led me to believe she was a one-note seductress. That is not at all the case. Until she is transformed into a shrieking harpy at the end of the film she is probably the most sympathetic character. She is complicated, confused, strong and vulnerable. A rather more sympathetic female character than Allen usually lets into his later works.

But things spiral out of control in the second half of the picture.

SPOILER ALERT.






After the affair of Chris and Nola starts to go wrong, the film turns to one of Allen's favorite later tropes: murder and mystery. Though we have the inside knowledge, we don't know what the outcome will be--that is, will he get away with it.

Some viewers may find themselves rooting for the anti-hero as he commits a heinous crime. I found myself cringing and thinking, "No, no, no. Stop now. There is still time to stop." Later, when an Inspector (British style detective) sits straight up in bed inspired by the solution to the crime, I was cheering for him. But he is foiled by a very clever plot twist that looked like it would be Chris's undoing and turned out to be his salvation.

In this movie, the bad guy wins, the innocents suffer or remain ignorant and life goes on. It left me a little queasy.