Woody's terrific non-comedic nod to Hitchcock with a sizzling Scarlett Jo

Rating: 10/10 (16 December 2016)

Woody Allen's "Match Point" at 53rd San Sebastian in 2005
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The dominant theme at the festival this year was Hitchcock with Hitchcock imagery everywhere celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Master of Suspense. Though there actually are no films by Hitchcock on view, several films are in a way a homage to the master. "Match Point", the latest from Woody Allen is a vast departure from his usual form and is, in effect, a Hitchcockian suspense thriller filmed in London no less, with an entirely English cast except for a smashingly sexy Scarlett Johansson in a most uncharacteristic vamp role, as the sole American presence – (and what a presence she is!). Young Scarlett really sets the celluloid aflame in this stylish shot out of Mr. Konigsberg's Twilight Zone, with savvy support from Jonathan Rhys Meyers as the freaked-out lover-killer who in the end will go unpunished.... No sidewalks of New York, no neurotic Jews, no sly jokes and one liners, just a straightforward English psychodrama made with such aplomb you would never guess it was a Woody Allen film if you missed the opening credits. In a way it does hark back to Woody's Crimes and Misdemeanors, but only because of the theme of getting away with murder. Rhys is a professional but impoverished tennis instructor and bald faced social climber with clients in high society. His character marries into a wealthy family, but his social position is threatened by a steamy extra-marital affair with his new brother-in-law's girlfriend, played by Johansson. When Johansson claims to be pregnant and insists that he leave his wife for her -- which would bring down the whole world he has strived so hard to attain - she signs her death warrant. Rhys goes to her apartment, shoots her to death (in a shocking sequence) and makes it look like a robbery to obtain drugs. The rest is a cat and mouse interrogation by a Scotland yard detective with echoes of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. His skin is saved by a twist of fate similar to a tennis ball suspended momentarily on the net which could fall either way. This is, of course, the Match Point of the title. Instead of a tennis ball we have an incriminating ring from the scene of the crime which accidentally gets dumped onto the ground after teetering on a rail by the river where Rhys is disposing of other evidence from the scene of the crime. We find out that the ring was picked up by a junkie who got killed but now appears to be the indisputable culprit who killed Johansson. Case closed. Our anti-hero gets away with murder. Everything handled just right by Allen to produce a tight thriller with the kinds of twists and turns that mirror Hitchcock to a tee. Not only is this a. "return to form" for Woody, but a venture into fresh new territory -- straight drama with not a single laugh --and done like an expert born to the cloth. Most enjoyable film with an entirely new Scarlett Jo! as an astonishingly sexy femme fatale.