jamescuarterodotcom

woody allen’s match point wasn’t bad but it’s a complete retread of 1989’s amazing crimes & misdemeanors, to the point that if you’d seen the latter you end up spending 2/3 of the movie looking at your watch and thinking of better uses of your $6.75 because you know how it will end. unlike crimes, which was an intricate and sometimes unbearably tense look at morality featuring great performances (and included two contrasting subplots that really fleshed out the film), match point bullies its way from beginning to end with a singular story and smashes you over the head you with allen’s main theme - that we live in a world where going out of the moral constraints of society for greed, lust or selfishness can be justified because there are no real consequences if 1) you’re lucky and 2) you know how to play the game.

it’s normally the kind of bleakness that i can get into if it’s done right. and this absolutely wasn’t done right. allen begins by trading manhattan for london and like a lot of his films, you get a look into the lives of the wealthy and arty upper crust of society. however, aside from one or two shots, this may as well have been filmed on a soundstage in toronto. characters walk out of cartier boutiques, hop in and out of taxis, go to galleries and theaters but it’s like what a kid’s idea of london (and londoners) is, without any grit or feel for the city.

i find jonathan rhys-meyers likable enough but he clearly does not have the chops to carry this kind of film (and it’s certainly not his fault), nor does scarlett johannson serve the film by giving her role any sense of vulnerability. but they both sure are pretty and this is another problem with this movie, if allen had gone a bit further in fleshing out the main characters instead of making everyone a caricature, and stopped a lot shorter with his awkward and tortuous dialogue maybe we’d feel something other than contempt for allen by the end of this movie. contempt for rehashing a plot for a movie that he made over fifteen years ago, contempt for his fixation on misogynistic characters that only serve to justify his own indiscretions. while i’m at it, contempt for his rudimentary grasp of the game of pro tennis. not recommended, rent or buy crimes and misdemeanors instead. or just count the number of bad tennis puns in this review.