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Film review

Woody makes his 'Point'

The longtime filmmaker switches gears and surprises fans with the thriller Match Point.

By STEVE PERSALL
Published January 19, 2006

[DreamWorks]

Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Rhys Meyers play Nola Rice and Chris Wilton in Woody Allen’s Match Point, which was filmed in and around London.

Something dreadful will happen in Woody Allen's Match Point. What, how and to whom and for what reason isn't clear until it's committed, but we sense it's coming from the start. We've known these omens before, in writings by Theodore Dreiser, James M. Cain and Fyodor Dostoyevski, and too many film noirs to mention.

Where we've never seen them is in Allen's films, making Match Point both a radical departure for the 70-year-old filmmaker and a refinement of the classic cinema adoration that got him into trouble with fans before. Allen wanted to be Ingmar Bergman, then Federico Fellini, then Fritz Lang when most people wanted him to be funny. Match Point isn't a comedy by a long shot.

Instead, it's Allen wandering into Alfred Hitchcock's London territory and feeling triumphantly comfortable. Not the macabre Hitch of Psycho, but the casually escalating suspense of Strangers on a Train and Dial M for Murder. Allen has explored criminal guilt before, in comedy set-ups and philosophically in Crimes and Misdemeanors. This time he's seduced by the motivation and opportunity for committing a perfect crime, and how the most unreliable factor is luck.

Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is a lucky guy. Tennis was his ticket out of a poor Irish upbringing onto the pro tour and then a cushy coaching position at a country club. He could be a distant cousin of George Eastman, the corrupted social climber in Dreiser's A Place in the Sun. Chris makes fast company with Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode), privileged son of a rich businessman. He also takes a fancy to Tom's sister Chloe (Emily Mortimer), a perpetually nice person eager to bring Chris into the family.

Lucky guy. Chris is set up with a job in the family business, a personal driver and expense account, plus automatic invitations to ritzy events. Marriage to Chloe is a logical step, not only for security but genuine love.

Tom is engaged to Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson), a sexy American who calls herself an actor after one commercial. Mother disapproves. Chris and Nola share perfectly scripted flirting over a game of pingpong - the resemblance to Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor's meeting over billiards in the film version of A Place in the Sun is unmistakable. So is the infidelity and tragedy to follow.

Revealing anything else would spoil the masterful way Allen springs tiny surprises and incriminations along the way. Suffice to say that lust and selfishness can be lethal, and not always in the expected fashion. Match Point steers viewers toward conclusions that are averted at the last moment and replaced with turns coming logically from left field. When the police get involved the drama tightens like a noose, loosened only by an ingenious stroke of - you guessed it - luck.

The beauty of Allen's film, what keeps things plausible, is his understatement of dread. Like Hitchcock preached, he keeps us more aware of things than the characters. We know the details that make a deceitful telephone conversation another step toward something bad. We flinch when an innocent remark cuts too close to the guilty bone. Foreshadowing is everywhere, in museum paintings, the opera house and on a skeet shooting range. Putting it all together makes us feel almost as ruthless as the perpetrator.

As usual, Allen's ensemble cast is superbly managed, with Rhys Meyers especially fine in a multiply conflicted role. Chris' ambition has its perks and prices, its times to be suave and times to sweat. Rhys Meyers is believable doing either, a modern version of every Hitchcock hero who's in over his head. Johansson and Mortimer split the duality of Hitch's heroines; Nola is the icy blond with a femme fatale scent and Chloe is the Madonna figure. They share few scenes but each recalls the other when they're with Chris, as it would be in his mind.

Placing viewers into that darkening place is what Allen does best in Match Point, a startling development so late in his career, in a place so foreign to his beloved Manhattan. Part of the film's pleasure is realizing that this taut, sophisticated eventual thriller is crafted by a filmmaker we thought we knew and, honestly, had considered washed up. Luck is when preparation meets opportunity. Allen has both ingredients, inventing a perfect crime in a near-perfect movie.

- Steve Persall can be reached at 727 893-8365 or persall@sptimes.com

Grade: A

Director: Woody Allen

Cast: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Scarlett Johansson, Emily Mortimer, Matthew Goode, Brian Cox, Penelope Wilton

Screenplay: Woody Allen

Rating: R; sexual situations, profanity, brief violence

Running time: 124 min.

[Last modified January 18, 2006, 11:22:07]