Match Point Strikes A Right Balance ***1/2

Rating: 9/10 (10 May 2006)

This is one of Woody Allen's best picture in years.
With his usual philosophy of life and ethics, Allen is able to blend this film in with such classics as "A Place in the Sun," and "Crimes and Misdemeanors."
He successfully recreates the dilemma of the emotions generated by the desire for upward mobility seen in the latter film with the ironic circumstances of the former. In addition, we have an Alfred Hitchcock ending which is just marvelous here.
This is a story of a tennis player getting involved with a rich student's family and the resulting love affair and tragedy that occurs. Scarlet Johannsen is terrific as the American born woman who is disillusioned with her quest for an acting career and inability to find a mate. Dropped by the student, she begins an affair with the teacher who has married the student's sister.
The aristocratic British family is shown as self-righteous, and alcoholic at best.
A wonderful hard-hitting film on ethics and values. The visits of the murder victims will haunt you. That scene was poignantly done in depicting the dilemma and justification of the protagonist.