"You were collateral damage."

Rating: 4/10 (22 January 2006)

MATCH POINT makes its point right up front: "I'd rather be lucky than good!" is the philosophy of the film and its protagonist and it's director, Woody Allen. However, neither Woody, nor the film, ever make it clear just what he means by "good' -- good as in talented or good as in moral. Not that it matters, since the film's protagonist proves to be neither in particular. Moreover, the axiom doesn't really mean anything. It is like saying "I'd rather wear a hat than a necktie;" the inference being that you have to choose. It's not an either/or situation; one can certainly be both lucky and good -- or neither. And no one can choose to be lucky or would choose to be unlucky. Thus, it is a meaningless premise: MATCH POINT sets out to argue over a non-sequitur.
MATCH POINT was greeted with praise as Woody's "comeback" film -- such nonsense! Given that Allen had directed and written and/or appeared in 24 movies in the decade and half prior to MATCH POINT, it is absurd to suggest he needed to make a comeback. Whether good (DECONSTRUCTING HARRY, EVERYBODY SAYS I LOVE YOU), bad (MELINDA AND MELINDA) or indifferent (ANYTHING ELSE, THE CURSE OF THE JADE SCORPION), his films have always been worth watching and debating. And they have all been distinctively Woody Allen movies; despite a variety of genres and attempts to experiment with styles, his films have bore his imprint. Until MATCH POINT, which is so generically mundane in style and attitude that it could easily be mistaken for a Lifetime cable TV movie. Rather than rebirth, as some have suggested, MATCH POINT seems to suggest an artistic coma.
Though described as a thriller, the film is mostly soap opera. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers stars as Chris Wilton, a middling tennis professional who takes a job instructing the game at a high-toned London club. By chance he is befriended by an heir to the wealthy Hewitt family and little by little becomes part of their inner circle. As a matter of course he ends up with a wealthy wife, a bothersome mistress and a murderous solution to this predicament. The story plods along with its unending backstory, not gaining any sort of thriller or murder mystery element until the third act, where the crime and the aftermath are played out with little intensity. Let's face it, Woody is not Hitchcock; the film is sadly lacking suspense, not to mention momentum.
Devoid of Allen's keen sense of humor or even an attempt at being witty, the film lacks his New Yorker's self-deprecating musings. And even though it is his first film made in England, you wouldn't know it were it not for the actors' accents and the occasional appearance of those little black London taxis. The story seems to want to make something out of the British class structure -- working class social climbers marrying into old money -- but there is no sense of time or place or social standing in the film. And even though Allen makes repeated references to opera he fails in his attempt to make this meager drama seem like a grand tragedy.
Like all of Woody's "serious" films, MATCH POINT is slickly produced and well crafted, but it lacks a certain style, neither reflecting the mannered, pretentiousness of his artsy films like INTERIORS or ANOTHER WOMAN nor the haughty refinement of a typical Ivory-Merchant adaptation. The result is a film that is coldly efficient, but not engrossing. This is not helped much by the two leads. The supporting cast (Matthew Goode, Emily Mortimer, Brian Cox, etc.) are just fine, giving warm and intelligent performances, but Rhys-Meyers and Scarlett Johansson as the neurotic mistress are, at best, just annoying. Together they are a pretty, albeit shallow, pair, but they exhibit no chemistry; lacking romance, passion or eroticism, their affair is a mere plot contrivance. Apart, Rhys-Meyers is painfully passive almost to the point of lacking a personality; how he charms his way into the benevolent Hewitt family, let alone upper-crust society, is the film's true mystery. Coming off as a sullen teenager, Johansson's never lives up to her character's image as an alluring temptress in the first half and then degenerates into a self-obsessed demanding shrew, not unlike Anjelica Huston's similarly neurotic harridan in CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS. And, quite frankly, since neither character is "good" in any sense of the word, why should we care if either is lucky. Allen defeats his premise long before he serves up his foregone conclusion.
Though there is no "Woody" character to act as his surrogate, the film is not devoid of all traces of Allen. The film boasts his standard theories about the randomness and pointlessness of human existence and the totally arbitrary nature of morality, ideas he has talked to death in previous films. But as trivial as his "lucky vs. good" theory sounds, it is sadly pessimistic to suggest that all good things truly spring from the accident of existence, while striving to be good, either morally or professionally, is relatively pointless because it has no guarantees. "Why bother trying," he seems to be saying, ignoring the fact that relying on luck has even fewer guarantees. Plus, it is astonishingly hypocritical for Woody to promote this self-defeating philosophy. Though he often claims his success has been based on luck, it is dishonest of him to embrace such false modesty when his career has been built on his constant effort to make better movies and to improve his craft. But as luck would have it, MATCH POINT can't be pointed to as a good example of that.