Surprising and effective update

Rating: 10/10 (11 June 2006)

This is what Woody Allen should have been doing all along. "Match Point" is a well-written and surprisingly, natural updating of "An American Tragedy" aka "A Place In The Sun" with only minor tweaks to character and circumstance. Transplanted to London, where the distinction between class structure is still more obvious, this version never seems unrealistic. Using the original premise of a man who seems to have talent but not the right set of social qualifications required to get ahead of the crowd, the main character has fortune and notoriety fall into his lap. The distinction here is that Woody Allen has married the story to the suggestion that not all our success has to do with the class we are born into, rather, a large part of who we become rests on basic luck, depending on how the wind blows on any one day. In this version, Chris Wilton (the George Eastman character in "A Place In The Sun") remains the same but our sympathies tend to lie with his wife this time. Oddly, as in "A Place In The Sun," the film twists our morals into ultimately hoping that he gets away with murder. Scarlett Johannson (in the Shelley Winters role) excellently portrays the desperate but determined role of the abandoned character except in this version, she has a much less passive role. A clever scene turns up towards the end when the gold ring bounces off the Thames River railing much in the same way as the tennis ball volleys into the net at the beginning, hinting at the idea that one's fate is determined by the smallest changes or mistakes. This film never lags and, ultimately and disturbingly, questions where our loyalties lay; with common decency or with the most evil of crimes. The slight change to the ending is a perfect twist.