Luck Is All

Rating: 8/10 (30 May 2006)

First of all, while there are similarities with this film and previous Woody Allen films as well as many other films, novels, the Bible and life in general, this is a new approach for him. This is a larger departure from his earlier films than might first be evident and it would best be viewed without too much glancing backward over the shoulder. There is a new level of steadiness, maturity, pace and control in his direction of this movie, but still an effortless continuation of his traditional irony. The result is one of his finest films.
In the opening scene, a tennis balls hits into the net, bounds upward, hangs for a second in mid-air and then suddenly falls squarely on the net to then fall on one side or the other. Which side it falls upon is entirely due to simple luck. Someone wins on its fall and therefore someone else must certainly lose.
Match Point is a study in the irony and vagary of the force of luck. Allen subtly capitalizes on the fear that most people have of this uncontrollable force on their lives. People like to feel they are personally in full charge of their destinies. It is unnerving to consider that ones fortune, loves, friends, enemies, and health are largely determined by luck, no matter how hard we try to overcome its power.
To prove his point, Allen dishes up an array of English characters flitting in and about London, being very British, with a single American girl swirling along with them in her various moods of joy and despair. The girl, played by a captivating Scarlett Johnasson is an actress that draws your eyes and thoughts to her by just being on the screen. Her performance as Nola Rice, a would be actress, is the focal point of the film and is absolutely essential to the film working. She brings it off with an easy skill that can only be accessible from an exceptional and inherent talent.
Needless to say that an ex-professional tennis player, Chris Wilton, coolly and perfectly played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, quickly takes notice of Nola at their first impact at a ping-pong table. The actors are able to produce an electrical tension in this first meeting generating a crackle of energy that fills their room. There is a restrained passion in their bantering conversation barely under their control.
The superb English supporting cast consists of, among others, Matthew Goode, Brian Cox, Penelope Wilton and Emily Mortimer playing the Hewetts. They seemed to have been born in the estate where many key scenes are staged and totally in place in other plush locations and seem utterly at home as members of the British upper class.
When Chris Wilton marries into the Hewetts, he is taken into the family business and is awarded success, security and luxury, but then he and Nola suddenly find themselves together. They then find themselves together more and more and for much more.
Chris Wilton then is presented with the dilemma that countless men have faced over hundreds of years. He will have to decide between the Hewetts and all they have to offer him or Nola, who has become increasingly difficult, emotional and irrational. While this dilemma is certainly not original, it has happened so regularly over the centuries it must be accepted as incontestably viable.
As pressure steadily builds on Wilton to solve his dilemma, he takes action and then in the end, his destiny is decided in the same way as foretold by the opening scene. An object goes up into the air and then falls one way or the other, setting off a sequence of events that ultimately decides Wilton's fate as a matter of simple luck.