Match Point

So I get a call tonight from someone asking if I would like to go and see the new Woody Allen movie, Match Point.  I figure...why not?  It's going to be a story set around tennis, right?   I like movies, I like Woody Allen, I like tennis, I like the person who has asked me to go...it sounds like a win-win situation.  Not so fast.  Woody Allen serves up a moral dilemma which ends up with the lead character deciding between the destruction of his own life or murder.  Tough choice.  A nice light topic before bed on a Thursday night! There is not much tennis in the movie but the film technique at the beginning that sets up the story is amazing. The tennis ball hovering above the net with the potential to go either way is the film's metaphor.  The subject matter being about the role that luck plays in shaping one's life.  In other words, which side of the net is your ball going to fall?

It was unusual to see a movie from Mr. Allen that was not set in his beloved Manhattan. It was also unusual that Woody was not in it nor was anyone even remotely resembling him or his "quirkiness". The characters are so self-assured even with their class distinctions between them.  But, the film turns dark in a way that only Woody Allen can portray.  

The lead character is Jonathon Rhys-Meyers.  He plays a recently retired professional tennis player who took up tennis to escape the impovershed life he had as a child in Ireland.   He takes a job at a country club, meets Tom, marries Tom's sister Chloe, falls in love with Tom's fiancee (Scarlett Johansson).  He appears to be everything that Woody Allen is not.  Quiet, confident, cunning, manipulating.  One trying to create luck on the back of others.  Johansson's femme fatale, come-on personality scorches the screen. 

Scarlett Johansson,  Matthew Goode and Jonathon Rhys-Meyers 

I will not say too much more as it is truly a thriller.  Even though it was billed as a comedy it was no laughing matter.  There was no sound in the theatre that I was aware of.  Except when I turned to my mate and said "I thought this was a tennis movie?" and he let out a "HA"!  It seems that Woody possibly doesn't find humor in his neuroses anymore and that is either a shame or a sign that he is more content with himself. On a  sidenote, I was considering murdering the dude behind me who nervously was kicking the back of my seat.  He got one glare and it was over.

Finally, it seems that in this movie, through all of the twists and turns, lust, guilt, lies, implications and irony, one question remains.  Why does Woody Allen find it necessary to leave Manhattan, go to England and make a movie about someone else's bad manners when we have plenty of them to go around right here in the US of A?  Just a thought...