"Match Point" pros and cons

Rating: 7/10 (14 January 2006)

I am inclined to say, see this when it comes out on video, but if that's the case you should really try to avoid any commentary about the film in the papers, on TV, among friends and of course herein.
Spoilers below so please stop reading if you've not already seen the film. Indeed I think most of my huff and puffery here at IMDb are meant for reading after seeing the films that I rate a 6 or higher. And this gets a 7/10 for me.
Of course Die-hard Woody fans like my wife and I will see this film no matter what... I should say I am decidedly *not* in the cramped camp who feel that Woody is done, I enjoyed at least one whole Melinda and about half of the other. I also found "Small Time Crooks" sweet enough to share with a grandparents and/or grandkids
So I don't think Woody is done by any chance. Nor am I (yet) the moralizing hypocrite who will denounce him for actions outside the celluloid frame.
Speaking of moralizing hypocrites...
...how many successful, septuagenarians do you think are so willing to contemplate the role of luck's dice in their paradise? I'd sure like to meet the other two. How many, even tangentially, will approach how the rich devour and destroy the poor?
Well the latter might be a bit of a stretch here, though the patriarch does prophesy that he'll make a shooter out of his young post-proletarian protégé. Anyways, clearly the meditation on luck is vital to this film.
If I have a complaint it's that the first 3/4 of the film is doggedly straight-forward, and sort of obvious. Much like a man pursuing a potential affair, there is nothing of the interesting reverse pursuit that I would have welcomed.
I thought the film could have used more overlapping subplots for distraction, instead of the single-mindedness on display. All we really need is the ping-pong scene, a few cloying moments with Chloe, a less cringeful version of the Motorcyle Diaries scene and then the courtside confession and rejection of that dirty Rice. Isn't all the rice in NoLa, dirty??
And then the affair, this needs to have a lot of footage to draw us into the discretion. Make us the silent partner to their extra-marital menage, still I thought there was more than enough of this. At least we did see Chris occasionally at work (something that doesn't happen enough in these films of the rich and richer).
Then there's the agonizingly long, he'll-never-leave-her scenes, and the telegraphed pregnancy. It almost seems like I didn't enjoy the film, and up until this point I did, but I was not drawn deeply into it. Then the passion is gone, and the crime remains (which even without Scott and Laci Peterson would have bugged me, but as we've been pumped opera all along, I knew the lover had to die).
Only after the little deaths and the big death did I feel my interest piqued. I actually thought Rhys-Meyers did a pretty formidable job through-out. Polite and internalizing, an audiences's friend. Scarlet's A for acting came not in the adultery, nor her later languishing anguish but for that scene in the bar. Her work with her eyes, the sense of her letting the alcohol let him think he could push his agenda was really well done in her post-screen test vulnerableness. This is the reverse pursuit, the two in the tango.
I thought Allen's best work came with the deceptive scene at the crime station. A nice piece of misdirection, with Chris volunteering a little too much after his first feint of innocence. I think that scene helped to point the luck arrow in a different direction than it would turn out. Or did it?
Ultimately this is a film that puts a lot off towards the payoff, but I hung in there in part because of some gorgeous footage (how can people who champion Woody's love of Manhattan and its milestones take issue with his love of London's landmarks??).
Other things helped me along; Woody's use of music, notably opera which I'm not expert on, was key. The theme played whenever Nola appears is later finally allowed to go a bit further, when things go to far. As always great casting in smaller roles (I saw more help for Juliet Taylor this time around). Penelope Wilton (seems often the last name of a key actor winds as one of the names in the film) as the meddlesome mother, with or without G&T injection. Matthew Goode was dandy as a Mommy's dandy. And Ewen Bremner was greet.
But Woody is even better when mortality is on the line. When Woody summons the ghosts of the deceased to confront our tennis pro turned con, that scene complete with Chris spilling wine/blood and trying to cleanse himself was compelling. I immediately wanted to see it again, to hear it again. That scene also contains a twist to help direct or misdirect us.
In all, worth watching, with some patience to get to the ending. Hmmm from the few operas I've seen, could that be a bit of the rule there as well. In this case, I really thought that the ends were a reward to the earlier meanderings, not exactly how I feel about means and ends in "Match Point" or in general.