Woody, Woody, Woody. You know I’ve enjoyed all your
more recent fare, especially earlier this year’s
Melinda and Melinda, despite not nearly being blown
out of the water by it in the same way as say, Annie
Hall. So, naturally, when I heard the news that
Match Point represented “the resurrection” of your
career, I awaited it with anticipation. Now, the wait is
over, and after seeing it, I think it speaks to the
magnitude of just how much people have been tempted into
finding liking in your work again.
Match Point is hardly a masterpiece,
although it isn’t a bad movie. Allen, in his
usual writer/director seat, really breaks no new ground
in both of the worlds that he chooses to explore:
infidelity and guilt. As for the former, he indulges in
boring conventions, building a “keep it a secret” line
of suspense. The latter, on the other hand, fails in
quite a peculiar way. Allen many times foreshadows the
fact that the movie will take a turn and become
something similar to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and
Punishment—in one scene, the protagonist is actually
reading a copy of it—but never did I imagine that he
would simply take all of that work’s ideas and apply
them to his own. All films, in one way or another,
borrow ideas from classic literature, but with such
direct references to C&P, I’m not exactly sure
that Allen the Writer was motivated to pen anything in
the realm of originality or unpredictability. However,
this isn’t to say that he fails in the Director’s Chair;
considering the fact that it is often as insipid as it
is, Match Point was assembled rather artfully.
The asset that keeps Match Point’s head
above water—other than Allen’s directorial merit—is its
fine European cast (the Americans in the movie fare much
worse). Jonathan Rhys-Meyers plays Chris in the film’s
lead-role, and Emily Mortimer his wife, Chloe. Both are
terrific, especially Mortimer, who never ceases to bring
new depth to her role as the details of the plot
unravel. Before long into their marriage, Chris begins
seeing Nola (Scarlett Johansson, who is surprisingly
out-of-her-element here), the ex-girlfriend of his
brother-in-law (the terrific Brian Cox). She becomes
obsessed with him. When Nola is impregnated as a result
of one of their many closet flings, Chris runs into an
especially sticky situation: she begs him to leave Chloe
and help raise her child, but he doesn’t have it in
himself to do so. A chain of rather predictable
events—which seem inherently obvious if you’ve read
Crime and Punishment— follow thereafter.
Had this been the first time that we’d seen
everything that Allen threw into the blender of Match
Point’s script, it likely would’ve been exactly what
it was when Dostoevsky originally wrote it in 1866:
riveting. Likewise, had he put more thought into making
a more original picture, the end result could’ve
been more powerful (especially given his notable
aforementioned directing talent). In truth, it’s not
really even the fact that Match Point is
identical to Crime and Punishment thematically
that bugs me: it’s that it seems to not have a brain of
his own. In essence, Allen’s ideas are only one notch
more sophisticated than those of the average Hollywood
remake, if only because of the facts that his source
material was more enlightening and he managed to change
the rising action into a fable about adultery. Thank God
for convicting acting, because if it weren’t for it,
Match Point would’ve not only been a bump in the
road of Allen’s screenwriting career, but likely the
death of it, too.
-Danny, Bucket Reviews
