Match Point

Brr!!  Baby, it’s cold in this movie!  Sheesh.  None of the characters are even remotely warm-blooded.  This chilling type of film is certainly a departure for Woody Allen, and it’s getting him a lot of positive attention, but it’s hard to enjoy a film where you root for no one, and where your main character leaves you ice cold.

The movie starts out well enough, and has the usual Woody Allen angle of smart, cultured people having interesting, if slightly esoteric, conversations.  His new setting of London, as opposed to New York, seems to really suit him.  And it has a chilliness to it that suits the entire mood of the film, as well.

The story itself, other than the third act, is fairly standard fare.  Boy meets girl, girl has money so boy marries her, boy meets a different girl, cheating ensues, etc.  Been there, seen it a million times.  This film has a violent twist to it that changes things up a bit, but the tone of it becomes awkward, almost comedic, in a way that doesn’t seem to really fit.  Chris, played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, is such a smooth, snakelike operator in everything that he does, his initial bungling of his evil plan is foolish.  And the tone of the film from there becomes even more odd, with the introduction of a pair of goofy cops who wisecrack their way through a dead-end investigation.  Also, by the latter minutes of the film, the audience dislikes Chris so intensely and is left feeling so cold about the whole thing, it’s hard to feel anything good.

Another point is that Scarlett Johansson and Rhys-Meyers are both such deadpan actors, with monotone voices and barely a flicker of emotion in their eyes, that it’s hard to understand what they’re feeling, or to relate to them in any sympathetic way.  

I’m going home to put on a sweater…