Do you feel guilty?

Rating: 6/10 (9 February 2016)

Match Point recalls Crimes and Misdemeanors, which also had a passionate affair threaten to rip apart the marriage of a wealthy high-class couple. But in the latter there was never an excruciating task to pull off, a immaculate getaway and attempt to cover his tracks. Judah convinces himself that the hit is his brother's idea, has someone else do the dirty work for him, and is never once threatened with the possibility of getting caught. It was his own moral conscience that created the tension. In Match Point, there are numerous ideals thrown around about luck and fate and determinism that really take away from its moral centre - and in the tense, quiet manner in which Chris commits his crime, and waits agonising for the neighbour to walk away, it becomes a detective thriller rather than posing meaningful questions.
Chris is a retired tennis pro, which conveniently allows Allen to begin with a simple metaphor about his life's philosophy. He is from a poor background, but does not speak like it, and seems to have said goodbye to that world all together and never leave the world of luxury and riches when he becomes acquainted with the Hewett family. Early on, he seems rather embarrassed to receive a helping hand from Alec, but as time goes by, he gets more accustomed to a certain standard of living and would even kill for it.
The supporting characters are rife with cliché. Bride to be Chloe does not have an ounce of responsibility and shamelessly encourages the buying of her future spouse, all while spouting nonsense such as "I don't believe in luck, but hard work" without a hint of irony. Johansson's Nola is the wildly beautiful mess of a struggling actress with a deeper cleavage than back-story, and the Hewetts are of course disdainful of anyone that would seek to sabotage their legacy. Allen, on the financial incentive of BBC Films, shoots them on the backdrop of London's high class elite, but it feels more like a tourism advert with the annoying habit of them announcing every iconic destination they visit.
This marks a distinct departure from Allen's usual style and not in an overly impressive way. He has never been so openly critical of the high- class intellectual but paradoxically make it so enticing and seductive for the lowly Chris. These are shallow, shallow people who breed ever so carefully to maintain their legacy (there's even a quick quip about interbreeding like some royal family). In Allen's best films such as Hannah and Her Sisters and Annie Hall, his blocking was clever and inspired; it allowed the actors to breathe and display their insecurities through their body language in simple long takes. Here, he has a tendency to shoot closeups and move the camera indiscreetly to imitate a furtive glance or sign of attraction rather than trust his actors to do it - or even frame a single subject just to highlight how obvious their actions are. Chris and Nola will be shown in bed together several times, but cut away from before they reach peak physical passion - it's certainly not the post-coital chit chat that they sneak away for. And its easy to mistake Rhys Meyers broody, edgy performance for something of great depth and conflict; he does well for what he is given, but there's no substance to the characterisation that makes the drive for murder believable. The two shots from the sawn-off are over in a second, and he is allowed no time to linger and react.
Luck is purported to be the universal element. Allen is not subtle about this; it is brought up in conversations it has no right to be in, and in moments of dramatic climax, the soundtrack fades to make way for an opera backing, and a tiny incident of chance gets slowed down for faux poignancy. The script contains these little clues and red herrings that would not be out of place in a cheap thriller; an acquaintance near Nora when she gets that fateful call, an painfully long interrogation of Chris at the dinner table that is awkwardly thrown in for tension, and when Nora gets pregnant right away after months of toiling with Chloe, he winks at the audience and says: "What unbelievably bad luck!" And there are these cops which provide a very convenient ending. First they are hesitant to poke into family affairs. What sort of murder investigation would ever consider this? And then, almost insultingly, he comes to the perfect solution in a dream. Allen's writing might at times be snobbish, high-brow or overly pretentious, but it's never been this lazy. In the end, Chris is lucky that these detectives are written so poorly.