Masterpiece? Please!

Rating: 4/10 (27 January 2006)

The first part of 'Match Point', about the drift of the hero into a passionate but adulterous affair, is pretty good. But even in these scenes there are problems. For example, there is a love making scene in a field in the rain. I guess it is supposed to resonate with unbridled passion - but all I could think of is how uncomfortable the lovers would be, in the cold English rain and damp prickly hay. I generally enjoy tasteful erotic scenes, but the concept is preposterous.
However, this is small potatoes compared to the utter idiocy of the criminal plot and subsequent police work. The hero steals a skeet gun belonging to his father-in-law to murder his mistress by staging a robbery. He kills a neighbor, and then his girlfriend, the notion being that she surprised the thief. Both times the gun makes a polite little pop. Did Allen or any of the critics who praised this movie ever consider what sort of sound a skeet rifle ACTUALLY makes? When fired indoors? The entire building would shake. The reverbations would be heard for blocks around. The murderer would be found out in two minutes. The whole concept is utter nonsense. Hitchcock never overlooked such realistic details in his movies.
But infinitely worse is the police work - the typical contempt of a New York intellectual for the solid common sense of everyday life. One of the detectives sees through the scheme. But he gives up when a drug addict is discovered with an item of jewelry from the theft. Allen actually believes the police are not going to wonder how such a derelict came to possess an expensive skeet rifle? Or what happened to it? Or will not run routine ballistic tests on the rifles the father owns, the hero's motive being known to them? That they will close out a double homicide on one flimsy, possibly coincidental bit of evidence? Do be serious. There is more thoughtfulness in the first five minutes of any 'Law and Order' episode than this.
This movie is a little better than Allen's recent stuff - the drift into adultery is really good. But the plot twist is just plain stupid. The critics are rooting so hard for Allen that they overlook the sheer dumbness of the plot. But it is indeed dumb - so dumb that it wreaks havoc with the movie.