Match Point (2005)
Country: GB/US/LUX
Technical: Technicolor 124m
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Brian Cox, Matthew Goode, Scarlett Johansson, Emily Mortimer, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Penelope Wilton
Synopsis:
A former tennis pro takes a job as instructor at a club for the well-heeled and before long has secured connections within high society he had never dared dream of. However, his liaison with an American girl he meets through the family he has infiltrated threatens to jeopardize hisi increasingly comfortable position.
Review:
A queasy dramatic effort from its creator, whose twin inspirations are grand opera and Dostoievsky and whose hook is a tennis-derived axiom about life being down to luck rather than goodness. It is the tension between the artistic moral closure of both the former and the immoral triumph of the antihero thanks to the latter that forms the film's thematic backbone. The performances are okay; the aloof Rhys Meyers is well cast but it is hard to believe he is passionately in love with Johansson, and few, least of all the British actors, seem very comfortable speaking the (deliberately?) stilted dialogue. A couple of scenes afford glimpses of the Allen we know but generally this is Crimes and Misdemeanors without the credibility or the humour, though the murderer's freedom from guilt is at least more questionable.
Country: GB/US/LUX
Technical: Technicolor 124m
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Brian Cox, Matthew Goode, Scarlett Johansson, Emily Mortimer, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Penelope Wilton
Synopsis:
A former tennis pro takes a job as instructor at a club for the well-heeled and before long has secured connections within high society he had never dared dream of. However, his liaison with an American girl he meets through the family he has infiltrated threatens to jeopardize hisi increasingly comfortable position.
Review:
A queasy dramatic effort from its creator, whose twin inspirations are grand opera and Dostoievsky and whose hook is a tennis-derived axiom about life being down to luck rather than goodness. It is the tension between the artistic moral closure of both the former and the immoral triumph of the antihero thanks to the latter that forms the film's thematic backbone. The performances are okay; the aloof Rhys Meyers is well cast but it is hard to believe he is passionately in love with Johansson, and few, least of all the British actors, seem very comfortable speaking the (deliberately?) stilted dialogue. A couple of scenes afford glimpses of the Allen we know but generally this is Crimes and Misdemeanors without the credibility or the humour, though the murderer's freedom from guilt is at least more questionable.
Country: GB/US/LUX
Technical: Technicolor 124m
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Brian Cox, Matthew Goode, Scarlett Johansson, Emily Mortimer, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Penelope Wilton
Synopsis:
A former tennis pro takes a job as instructor at a club for the well-heeled and before long has secured connections within high society he had never dared dream of. However, his liaison with an American girl he meets through the family he has infiltrated threatens to jeopardize hisi increasingly comfortable position.
Review:
A queasy dramatic effort from its creator, whose twin inspirations are grand opera and Dostoievsky and whose hook is a tennis-derived axiom about life being down to luck rather than goodness. It is the tension between the artistic moral closure of both the former and the immoral triumph of the antihero thanks to the latter that forms the film's thematic backbone. The performances are okay; the aloof Rhys Meyers is well cast but it is hard to believe he is passionately in love with Johansson, and few, least of all the British actors, seem very comfortable speaking the (deliberately?) stilted dialogue. A couple of scenes afford glimpses of the Allen we know but generally this is Crimes and Misdemeanors without the credibility or the humour, though the murderer's freedom from guilt is at least more questionable.