Best movie of 2005, hands down

Rating: 9/10 (15 March 2006)

The perfectly fine Crash may have taken the Oscar, and equally good Brokeback Mountain most other awards, but I would say that Woody Allen's first London film was without a shadow of a doubt the best one I saw last year. It is one of the very best Allen has ever made, and that's saying a lot given the man's impressive record. It just kept me constantly on the edge of my seat, asking "will he or won't he?" at every turn, at every situation and every decision that the despicable character Chris Wilton had to face (and the terrible thing was that I'm pretty sure myself I would not be able to resist the temptation posed by Scarlett Johansson's ravishing beauty, so I couldn't help but empathize with his predicament a bit...). And the ending. Oh my God. What an ending. I didn't see that coming and it was fantastically clever. The film really drove the (very real) point home of how luck plays such a part in everybody's lives...
The only weak link in this masterpiece was Jonathan Rhys Meyers's performance; I found him flat and at times not quite believable in his delivery. My girlfriend suggested that this might be due to his efforts not to speak with his Irish accent, and it might be true, for he speaks with an English accent (which is weird, because his character is supposed to be Irish!). This minor glitch is what reduces my grade for the movie to a 9 instead of a perfect 10, but it is minor enough for me to still consider it a masterpiece and recommend it wholeheartedly to everyone.