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Match Point Reviews

"Match Point” is a great movie, which showcases Woody Allen’s ability to offer insights into the human condition. He reveals telling insights about people who need to be brutal in order to protect what they consider important.

Full Review | Apr 30, 2023

A glorious ride, with touches of Hitchcock, Patricia Highsmith and Woody Allen sprinkled through a film whose panoramic views of contemporary London are the next-best thing to a budget-weekend escape flight.

Full Review | May 7, 2020

A mesmerising mix of moral drama and dark humour, with a shock ending to die for.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 5, 2020

A finely tuned comeback worth celebrating.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 5, 2019

The change of locale from New York to London has done Woody Allen a world of good. As has oft been said, Match Point is his best movie since ... fill in the blank.

Full Review | Mar 13, 2018

His first film set in London, it boasts a young, pretty, something-for-everyone cast. As enter-tainment, however, it just slams limply into the net every time.

Full Review | Sep 26, 2017

Woody Allen's freshest and most potent film in years manages to be much more than an erotic thriller.

Full Review | Aug 9, 2017

...one of the venerable writer/director's more accomplished efforts in this new century.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 7, 2016

But, perhaps, the greatest parallel between Woody's Match Point and Hitch is duality. It's a brilliant device.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.0/5 | Sep 14, 2013

Full Review | Original Score: C | Feb 18, 2012

This lean, mean, surprisingly sultry thriller about fate, luck, greed and guilt is Woody Allen's best since "Mighty Aphrodite." Plus, it boasts a vintage-Allen metaphor of a bobbling tennis ball that, in a great gotcha scene, becomes a damning motif.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 19, 2010

There's no ground here that Allen hasn't gone over before, but as a treatment of upper crust mores and, eventually, as a thriller, it's compulsively watchable and generally well acted.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 19, 2010

Allen merely regurgitates his shrunken vision in veddy-British padding

Full Review | Aug 30, 2009

A limp, dull, and contrived rehash of "Crimes and MisDemeanors"...

Full Review | Apr 29, 2009

Just when you were about to give up on Woody Allen, he reinvents himself with a taut tour de force of a film that is unquestionably the best thing he's done in decades.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Feb 28, 2008

... retools the resolution of Crimes and Misdemeanors so its hero, instead of losing his grasp on morality, never even had a hold on morality in the first place.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Sep 12, 2007

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 14, 2007

Proves to be an intriguing enough adventure, provided you haven't seen Crimes and Misdemeanors and don't mind rooting for a despicable, amoral philanderer.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | May 25, 2007

Full Review | Original Score: A- | May 7, 2007

Match Point proves that Allen, at 70 years old, is very much still in the game.

Full Review | Mar 1, 2007

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Match point, common sense media reviewers.

Woody Allen film has adult themes, not for kids.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Protagonist engages in adultery, deceit, and murde

Murder near end of film, with shotgun. One body fa

Characters talk about sex and engage in it, with p

Some profanity.

Frequent smoking and drinking.

Parents need to know that this film includes frequent references to sex and sexual desire, including scenes of a married couple in bed and of adulterous sex (one takes place in a field, in the rain; the imagery is not explicit, but a minute or so of lusty performance). Characters frequently refer to "making love…

Positive Messages

Protagonist engages in adultery, deceit, and murder.

Violence & Scariness

Murder near end of film, with shotgun. One body falls off screen, the other appears, bloody.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Characters talk about sex and engage in it, with partial nudity; some women's clothes show cleavage or curves.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this film includes frequent references to sex and sexual desire, including scenes of a married couple in bed and of adulterous sex (one takes place in a field, in the rain; the imagery is not explicit, but a minute or so of lusty performance). Characters frequently refer to "making love" and use verbal innuendo ("Who's my next victim?", "a powerful serve"). Characters appear in various states of undress (the rainy scene shows the woman's nipples through her wet shirt). The film includes some arguments among family members; characters smoke cigarettes frequently and drink alcohol. The climax involves a murder with a shotgun, rendered in a way that emphasizes the emotional impact of the violence on the shooter. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (6)
• Kids say (3)

Based on 6 parent reviews

Best I've seen from Woody Allen

Great movie but the ending is a disappointment., what's the story.

Set in London, MATCH POINT focuses on Irish tennis pro Chris (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), who'd rather be lucky than good. He's bewildered by women, in particular by vivacious, sensuous Nola (Scarlett Johansson), an aspiring American actress. This even as he's engaged to be married to Chloe Wilton (Emily Mortimer), a bossy if occasionally sweet heiress, and Nola is dating Chloe's brother Tom (Matthew Goode). The British siblings are blandly self-absorbed and pleasantly ignorant, owing to their old money, while the outsiders want in. Chris' efforts to achieve his ambition grow increasingly nefarious. Chloe's father Alec (Brian Cox) takes a liking to Chris, but Chloe's mother, Eleanor (Penelope Wilton) disparages Nola, whose acting career stalls. Mummy's disapproval underlies Tom's own evolving diffidence; he ends up dumping Nola, while Chris commits to a career with Alec's company and a fancy church wedding with Chloe. Feeling "pressure" at home, Chris turns to Nola, their affair becoming more urgent, if not exactly passionate.

Is It Any Good?

Grim and gloomy, Woody Allen's film is a noirish character study by Woody Allen, not a comedy and not for kids. Chris's slide into the standard soul-sucking vortex is not especially affecting. His thudding caddishness, lacking in conscience or compassion, makes his appeal to Chloe, who otherwise seems self-confident to a fault, seem odd, except for the fact that she's preoccupied with having a baby, that recurrent bane of Allen's women.

Because Chris is the indecisive, unhappy protagonist in a Woody Allen movie, you can pretty much guess what happens to him. Though Chris begins by asserting his faith in luck, he ends up adrift and haunted, without any "measure of hope for the possibility of meaning." Maybe it's just luck that the women around him -- irrational, demanding, and voluble -- come to represent that lack.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Chris's ambitions: does he want to be rich? To feel passion? To feel lucky? How does the film compare instances of luck and talent? How is Chloe's desire for a child a problem for Chris? How do the outsiders (American Nola and Irish Chris) show their desire to get "inside" the upper class British family?

Movie Details

• In theaters : December 28, 2005
• On DVD or streaming : April 25, 2006
• Cast : Emily Mortimer , Jonathan Rhys Meyers , Scarlett Johansson
• Director : Woody Allen
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : DreamWorks
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 124 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : some sexual content
• Last updated : December 6, 2023

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Match Point

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Woody Allen’s best movie in years means to trip us up: Sexual sizzle. London instead of Manhattan. Brit actors. Dark humor with a sting that leaves welts. You bet it’s a change. And it looks good on the Woodman, who doesn’t act in the film but writes and directs with a bristling newfound energy. True Allenphiles, however, will have no trouble recognizing the subversive themes that coursed through his 1989 groundbreaker, Crimes and Misdemeanors .

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Chris Wilton, an Irish social climber played with lethal charm by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, is a former tennis pro coaching at a posh club. He finds his mark in a friendly pupil, Tom Hewett (the excellent Matthew Goode). Tom has a pretty sister, Chloe (Emily Mortimer), eager to bed Chris, and a corporate giant of a father, Alec (Brian Cox), who’d be only too happy to find room at the top of the family business for a book-loving, opera-worshipping future son-in-law. The snake in this Eden is Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson), an American actress whose struggle to make it on the London stage is softened by enjoying the privileges that come with being Tom’s plaything of a fiancee. Johansson is tart and terrific, exuding enough come-on carnality to singe the screen. Chris feels the heat. Before long they’re screwing like rabbits in a field, in the rain yet.

The effect of this mesmerizing mind teaser is spellbinding. But if you think you know where it’s going, think again. Allen’s satiric jabs at the British upper crust — Chloe’s joy in the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber is a royal put-down — soon give way to a meditation on a world where luck plays a greater role than an absent God. Will Chris kill to maintain his place in the sun? Allen evokes Dostoevsky and Dreiser, but don’t expect justice from a shocker ending that manages to be devilishly clever and morally repugnant. It’s been a long time since a Woody Allen film sparked juicy debate. Savor it.

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Match Point Review

06 Jan 2006

124 minutes

Match Point

In a recent interview, Woody Allen, who turns 70 this year, remarked that, “All that crap they tell you about getting joy and having a kind of wisdom in your golden years — it’s all tripe.” But if the advancing years have given Allen nothing in the way of wisdom, they have equipped him with a newly stoked fury at the randomness of life. Match Point is a pleasingly sour shaggy-dog tale about how almost no-one ever gets what they deserve, that plays like an episode of Tales Of The Unexpected directed by, well, Woody Allen.

The most obvious departure for Allen is the relocation from his beloved Manhattan to London, or at least, the more photogenic bits of London. (For the most part he manages to avoid the tendency to travelogue that most directors face when filming off familiar turf, so thankfully there are few red double-deckers or shots of Piccadilly Circus with the caption “London”, though characters do have an unnerving tendency to ostentatiously announce the chic locations for their rendezvous — “Let’s meet at the Tate Modern!”) But there are other distinctly un-Woodyish elements: a sex scene that’s certainly one of the most graphic

he’s ever filmed, together with some genuinely shocking violence. But its key distinction is the air of fatalistic irony that pervades this tart tale of hubris denied. (A biographical musing: would Woody have made this treatise on the essential unfairness of the universe before he was denied access to his children by a New York court?)

Both Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers are well cast as the pillow-lipped love-birds, the former playing tennis coach and social climber Chris with just a tinge of Ripley-style ambivalence, and there’s solid support from, among others, Brian Cox as the blissfully unaware paterfamilias, the actor here exercising his legal right to be in everything.

For fans of ‘the earlier funny ones’, it’s worth pointing out that Match Point is certainly not a comedy in the conventional sense, but it is a recitation of the great cosmic joke: justice and fairness have nothing to do with where you end up — it’s all about the breaks. Our good fortune is that with Melinda And Melinda and now Match Point, Allen seems, after nearly half-a-dozen disappointments, finally to be back on track.

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Match Point (United States/United Kingdom, 2005)

In my review of Woody Allen's previous misfire, Melinda and Melinda , I wrote the following: "Lately, Allen's films have sunk into a state of heightened mediocrity - sporadically entertaining, but often disappointing, at least for those clinging to the hope that Allen will return to 'form.' I no longer expect great things from a Woody Allen movie…" Indeed, it has been over a decade since Allen has produced a memorable motion picture. Match Point puts an end to the drought, and does so in an impressive and unexpected fashion. Not only could one argue that this is the best "serious" work the director has ever attempted, but it's presented in a way that even the most seasoned Allen fan will have difficulty recognizing the iconic filmmaker's fingerprints.

Some of the differences are immediately evident: Allen does not appear on-screen, the setting has been shifted from New York to London, and the cast and crew are predominantly British. Other aspects, although no less important, are more subtle. Allen's usual "voice" is absent. Match Point does not deal with a neurotic character and there are no May/December romances. The comedy is minimal. This is a character piece that develops into a slow burn thriller. And Allen proves himself to be a master of misdirection. I thought I knew how Match Point was going to end; I was wrong.

Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) is a retired pro tennis player who has signed on to be a tennis instructor at a posh British club. One of his first clients is Tom Hewitt (Matthew Goode), an affable fellow who invites Chris out for a night at the Opera when he discovers that he and Chris share some of the same tastes (opera, classic novels, etc.). There, Chris meets Tom's family: his father, Alec (Brian Cox); his mother, Eleanor (Penelope Wilton); and his sister, Chloe (Emily Mortimer). Chris and Chloe begin seeing each other, and it's not long before Chloe falls for the dashing athlete. Chris' feelings are more reserved - he feels affection for Chloe, but no great passion, but he recognizes the kind of stepping stone that a liaison with the Hewitt family could represent. Enter Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson), Tom's headstrong American fiancée. Chris is immediately smitten. Even as he woos Chloe with the intention of marrying her, he becomes obsessed with Nola. And, as with any romantic house of cards, this one seems destined to collapse spectacularly.

Without giving away plot details that are best discovered by the individual viewer, I can't say much about the film's final act, except to note that it's much different from what comes before it, and that's what elevates Match Point from a solid, character-based story to a near-masterpiece. No Allen movie since Crimes and Misdemeanors (16 years ago) has left as lasting an impression. In an era when the filmmaker has churned out one disposable motion picture after another, it's a welcome surprise to find a gem like Match Point lurking in multiplexes.

This is Chris' story, and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers ( Bend It Like Beckham ) is perfectly suited to play the part. Although there are less-than-laudable aspects to his character, Meyers plays Chris with sincerity. He's a flawed, but not evil, individual. There's a little of Stephen Glass ( Shattered Glass ) in him. He's a sycophant social climber who's not beyond using a little groveling to ingratiate himself with someone who advance his opportunities. And he has a genuine, almost pathological need to be liked. Meyers shows no difficulty handling the demands of this complex character.

Emily Mortimer and Scarlett Johansson show different faces of womankind. Mortimer's Chloe is the nurturing, supportive female: one who takes her husband's denial of an affair at face value and whose primary goal in marriage is to give her parents grandchildren. It's a role that Mortimer slides into without difficulty. Johansson, on the other hand, is simultaneously self-sufficient and needy. The qualities that attract Chris to her are the ones that make the potential of a long-term relationship harrowing. This gives Johansson an opportunity to show a little of the femme fatale. Experienced British thespians Brian Cox and Penelope Wilton have supporting roles as the matriarch and patriarch of the Hewitt clan.

One of the most keenly observed elements of Match Point is the way in which it shows how infidelity can erode a marriage. Most movies that delve into this subject do it in a heavy-handed, melodramatic fashion. Allen's approach is quieter and has the ring of truth. We are taken through the stages of the affair: its passionate beginnings, the slide into routine, and the growing gap between what's real and what the characters want. For Nola, it becomes a question of whether Chris will leave his wife. For Chris, it becomes a question of whether he can give up his comfortable lifestyle for a woman who makes him feel, but may be unstable.

Had Match Point simply been about the Chris/Nola/Chloe triangle and the way the deceptions and willful ignorance impacts all three lives, it would have been a compelling motion picture. But Allen takes things to the next level, and that's what makes Match Point memorable. For the first time in a long time, we understand why Allen is considered a master. If this is what filming in London does for him, maybe he should move there permanently.

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• DVD & Streaming

Match Point

• Comedy , Drama , Mystery/Suspense

Content Caution

In Theaters

• Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Chris Wilton; Scarlett Johansson as Nola Rice; Matthew Goode as Tom Hewett; Emily Mortimer as Chloe Hewett

Home Release Date

• Woody Allen

Distributor

Movie review.

Does success or failure in life spring from hard work, great skill and moral choices? Or does luck play the largest role in determining who wins and loses? That’s the question writer/director Woody Allen volleys with in Match Point .

London country club tennis pro Chris Wilton explains his earnest view that simple chance rules our existence. “People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck,” he says in an opening voiceover. “It’s scary to think so much is out of one’s control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward and you win. Or maybe it doesn’t, and you lose.”

Born in Ireland to a difficult life, Chris is eager to experience the finer things. He develops a taste for opera and studies literature on the side. Luckily , he is befriended by Tom Hewett, the heir of an über-wealthy upper-class London family. Soon, Tom’s sister, Chloe, takes an interest in Chris. And it’s not long before she lands him an upwardly mobile job in one of her father’s companies. Marriage follows, and Chris has apparently lucked into the lifestyle of his dreams, including weekends at the family’s enormous country estate, a personal driver and shopping at the best stores in London.

The sole obstacle to Chris’ luxurious existence is his destructive obsession with Nola Rice, a seductive and neurotic American actress initially engaged to Tom. Chris begins an affair with her that continues after her engagement to Tom is broken and after his marriage to Chloe is well established. For a time, he juggles his myopic lust for Nola with his insatiable greed for a life of privilege. Eventually, the other woman forces him into a terrible choice. His action will prove the ultimate test of his philosophy that fate is absolute over any supposed meaning in life.

Positive Elements

It’s difficult to identify any positive elements in this film. All of the characters appear to be motivated solely by self-interest. Even the sweet-natured Chloe practically buys Chris with her father’s money, seemingly unconcerned with his true feelings for her. However, the movie’s utter obliviousness to positivity and morality may prompt thoughts in the minds of moviegoers about the nature of luck, morality and God’s direction in our lives. (More on that in the “Conclusion.”)

Spiritual Elements

Chris is said to have been raised by an austere, religious father who found Jesus after losing both of his legs. Tom says sarcastically that “it hardly seems a fair trade.” Chris obviously does not share his father’s faith, insisting that all of existence is ruled by blind chance. Tom quotes his vicar as saying that “despair is the path of least resistance.” Chris disagrees.

A character guilty of a heinous crime admits that it would be fitting for him to be caught and punished, that he would welcome it as a sign that there is at least some meaning in life beyond mere chance. Apparently, his not getting caught somehow provides evidence against the existence of an involved God or a moral structure to the universe.

Sexual Content

Although Match Point contains no outright nudity, at least half-a-dozen sexual encounters are witnessed. Covered by sheets, Chris and Chloe are seen having sex (with movement and sounds). Chris catches Tom and Nola making out at a party; her bare leg is glimpsed around Tom, and he appears to have her underwear in his hands. Chris and Nola frantically clutch at and disrobe each other numerous times, including scenes of her in small underwear, the couple under sheets, and brief glimpses of him ripping her clothes off, her blindfolding him, them sharing a candlelit massage, them in a field in the rain, etc. Additionally, Chris is seen in nonsexual situations in his underwear and wearing just a towel. We hear sexual dialogue between Chloe and Chris related to their attempts to get pregnant.

Violent Content

No blood or gore. But one character murders others in cold blood with a shotgun. The camera never reveals the victims, aside from one corpse’s hand.

Crude or Profane Language

The names God, Jesus and Christ are abused around 25 times total. The British swear words “bloody” and “s-dding” are heard several times, as are a few milder profanities.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Nola smokes constantly, and Tom smokes quite a bit. All of the characters drink often, but Nola, especially, seems to have a problem with alcohol. She regularly gets drunk, following in the footsteps of her mother, also an alcoholic. Tom’s mother appears to be tipsy on a few occasions.

Other Negative Elements

A woman who becomes pregnant is urged repeatedly to get an abortion. She responds that she won’t do so a third time.

Match Point has been widely hailed as the 70-year-old Woody Allen’s return to cinematic glory after years of churning out sub-par box-office bombs. (Have you ever even heard of Melinda and Melinda, Hollywood Ending or Anything Else ?). And in spite of some early awkwardness, the film does indeed become a taut, thought-provoking and well-crafted drama. Specifically, the story’s last act provides several twists and turns that thoroughly satisfy both the climax and Allen’s central theme of luck’s supremacy over providence.

Several critics have suggested this film might be the director’s best since Crimes and Misdemeanors . The comparisons to that engaging film are hard to miss. But Match Point delves into darker territory. In it, Allen appears to be contesting the conclusions Fyodor Dostoyevsky came to in his writing of the book from which Allen’s 1989 film draws its title and theme.

Early in Match Point , Chris is seen reading the book either in an attempt to better fit with his upper-class friends or out of sympathy for the novel’s protagonist. In that story, a man who commits a terrible double murder suffers under the weight of his crime in spite of apparently getting away with it. Eventually, he confesses, turns himself in and finds redemption both in Christ and in the love of a forgiving woman.

Allen’s modern take finds the criminal unable to accept either the reality of sin or of a God who would hold anyone accountable for such things. Although the killer would welcome being proved wrong, he chooses to see the lack of justice for his crime as evidence that luck rules all. Without justice, there can be no meaning to life.

And if justice, reward and punishment were measured only by the circumstances of one’s life on earth, I might be inclined to agree with the film’s perspective. With the biblical writer Jeremiah we’ve all wondered, “Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do the faithless live at ease?” For those of us who have placed our faith in a personal God, the only satisfying answer is found in the knowledge that human reward and suffering are weighed out on an eternal scale, not a temporal one. The wicked will not prosper beyond the days of this brief life. But the God of love offers eternal reward to those who accept His forgiveness by embracing the sinless Messiah’s payment for their sin. God’s justice is absolute, even if infidelity and murder go unpunished for a short time.

For those who can’t (or won’t) step over that line of faith, who can’t (or won’t) invest in the reality of the immaterial world, Allen’s conclusion is the most logical alternative. In fact, it’s downright brave. Take your best shot and accept the hand fate deals you. It’s a tragically flawed and shortsighted view, but the only truly honest one on the menu for those without conviction of a life beyond death. I agree with Allen that there’s no middle ground, no reason to hope that human goodness alone offers any real meaning in a world without God. Goodness without God is empty and powerless. Goodness from God is eternal and redemptive.

A turning point for Dostoyevsky’s self-tortured criminal springs from the New Testament story of Lazarus being raised from the dead by Jesus. If there is indeed a resurrection from the dead, he must come to different conclusions about his crime. And so must we all. No matter that Woody Allen’s Match Point does not.

Christopher Lyon

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FILM REVIEW

London Calling, With Luck, Lust and Ambition

By A. O. Scott

• Dec. 28, 2005

Because Woody Allen's early films are about as funny as any ever made, it is often assumed that his temperament is essentially comic, which leads to all manner of disappointment and misunderstanding. Now and then, Mr. Allen tries to clear up the confusion, insisting, sometimes elegantly and sometimes a little too baldly, that his view of the world is essentially nihilistic. He has announced, in movie after movie, an absolute lack of faith in any ordering moral principle in the universe -- and still, people think he's joking.

In "Match Point," his most satisfying film in more than a decade, the director once again brings the bad news, delivering it with a light, sure touch. This is a Champagne cocktail laced with strychnine. You would have to go back to the heady, amoral heyday of Ernst Lubitsch or Billy Wilder to find cynicism so deftly turned into superior entertainment. At the very beginning, Mr. Allen's hero, a young tennis player recently retired from the professional tour, explains that the role of luck in human affairs is often underestimated. Later, the harsh implications of this idea will be evident, but at first it seems as whimsical as what Fred Astaire said in "The Gay Divorcée": that "chance is the fool's name for fate."

Mr. Allen's accomplishment here is to fool his audience, or at least to misdirect us, with a tale whose gilded surface disguises the darkness beneath. His guile -- another name for it is art -- keeps the story moving with the fleet momentum of a well-made play. Comparisons to "Crimes and Misdemeanors" are inevitable, since the themes and some elements of plot are similar, but the philosophical baggage in "Match Point" is more tightly and discreetly packed. There are few occasions for speech-making, and none of the desperate, self-conscious one-liners that have become, in Mr. Allen's recent movies, more tics than shtick. Nor is there an obvious surrogate for the director among the youthful, mostly British and altogether splendid cast. If you walked in after the opening titles, it might take you a while to guess who made this picture.

After a while you would, of course. The usual literary signposts are in place: surely no other screenwriter could write a line like "darling, have you seen my copy of Strindberg?" or send his protagonist to bed with a paperback Dostoyevsky. But while a whiff of Russian fatalism lingers in the air -- and more than a whiff of Strindbergian misogyny -- these don't seem to be the most salient influences. The film's setting is modified Henry James (wealthy London, with a few social and cultural outsiders buzzing around the hives of privilege); the conceit owes something to Patricia Highsmith's Ripley books; and the narrative engine is pure Theodore Dreiser -- hunger, lust, ambition, greed.

Not that the tennis player, Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), seems at first to be consumed by such appetites. An Irishman of modest background, he takes a job at an exclusive London club, helping its rich members polish their ground strokes. He seems both easygoing and slightly ill at ease, ingratiating and diffident. Before long, he befriends Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode), the amiable, unserious heir to a business fortune, who invites Chris to the family box at the opera. From there, it is a short trip to an affair with Tom's sister, Chloe (Emily Mortimer), a job in the family firm and the intermittently awkward but materially rewarding position of son-in-law to parents played by Brian Cox and Penelope Wilton.

When "Match Point" was shown in Cannes last spring, some British critics objected that its depiction of London was inaccurate, a demurral that New Yorkers, accustomed to visiting Mr. Allen's fantasy Manhattan, could only greet with weary shrugs and sighs. Uprooting a script originally set in the Hamptons and repotting it in British soil has refreshed and sharpened the story, which depends not on insight into a particular social situation, but rather on a general theory of human behavior. London is Manhattan seen through a glass, brightly: Tate Modern stands in for the Museum of Modern Art; Covent Garden takes the place of Lincoln Center. As for the breathtaking South Bank loft into which Chris and Chloe move, it will satisfy the lust for high-end real estate that has kept the diehards in their seats during Mr. Allen's long creative malaise.

In this case, though, what happens in the well-appointed rooms and fashionable restaurants is more interesting than the architecture or the décor. Mr. Rhys-Meyers has an unusual ability to keep the audience guessing, to draw us into sympathetic concord even as we're trying to figure him out. Is he a cipher or a sociopath? A careful social climber or a reckless rake? The first clue that he may be something other than a mild, well-mannered sidekick comes when Chris meets Tom's fiancée, an American actress named Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson), in a scene that raises the movie's temperature from a polite simmer to a full sexual boil. (The scene also quietly acknowledges a debt to "A Place in the Sun," George Stevens's adaptation of Dreiser's "American Tragedy." The parallels don't stop there. Mr. Rhys-Meyers's hollow-cheeked watchfulness recalls Montgomery Clift. Which makes Ms. Johansson either the next Elizabeth Taylor or the new Shelley Winters. Hmm).

What passes between Chris and Nola is not only desire, but also recognition, which makes their connection especially volatile. As their affair advances, Ms. Johansson and Mr. Rhys-Meyers manage some of the best acting seen in a Woody Allen movie in a long time, escaping the archness and emotional disconnection that his writing often imposes. It is possible to identify with both of them -- and to feel an empathetic twinge as they are ensnared in the consequences of their own heedlessness -- without entirely liking either one.

But it is the film's brisk, chilly precision that makes it so bracingly pleasurable. The gloom of random, meaningless existence has rarely been so much fun, and Mr. Allen's bite has never been so sharp, or so deep. A movie this good is no laughing matter.

"Match Point" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has some steamy (though not explicit) sex scenes and a few moments of shocking violence.

Match Point Opens today in New York and Los Angeles.

Written and directed by Woody Allen; director of photography, Remi Adefarasin; edited by Alisa Lepselter; production designer, Jim Clay; produced by Letty Aronson, Gareth Wiley and Lucy Darwin; released by DreamWorks Pictures. Running time: 124 minutes.

WITH: Jonathan Rhys-Meyers (Chris Wilton), Scarlett Johansson (Nola Rice), Emily Mortimer (Chloe Wilton), Matthew Goode (Tom Hewett), Brian Cox (Alec Hewett) and Penelope Wilton (Eleanor Hewett).

Match Point

A change of scenery does Woody Allen a world of good in "Match Point." Making his first film in the U.K. with a story originally conceived for New York, Allen once again takes up issues of morality and guilt in what amounts to "An English Tragedy." Well-observed and superbly cast picture is the filmmaker's best in quite a long time.

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

• Remember Me 14 years ago
• Shutter Island 14 years ago
• Green Zone 14 years ago

This review was updated at 2:31 p.m.

A change of scenery does Woody Allen a world of good in “Match Point.” Making his first film in the U.K. with a story originally conceived for New York, Allen once again takes up issues of morality and guilt in what amounts to “An English Tragedy,” as in Theodore Dreiser. Well-observed and superbly cast picture is the filmmaker’s best in quite a long time and as such reps an attractive potential acquisition for a U.S. distrib keen to break Allen’s recent string of B.O. flops.

Although the script is spiked with mordant humor, the prevailing serious mood is underlined by doom-laden laments from Italian grand opera and refs to Dostoevsky, Strindberg and even Andrew Lloyd Webber’s dramatically similar “The Woman in White.” In thematic terms, “Match Point,” whose tennis allusion reflects a preoccupation with the role of luck in life, comes closest to “Crimes and Misdemeanors” among Allen’s films.

Popular on Variety

First 45 minutes constitute marvelous social and romantic comedy-drama. With the action set squarely among Britain’s young upper crust, tale has the debonair Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode) taking on Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, the Elvis of the moment) as a tennis coach at his exclusive club. Chris is fresh off the pro tennis circuit, where he did well but never broke through to the winner’s circle. Although identified as Irish, the terribly attractive athlete speaks with an impeccable posh accent that allows him to fit in seamlessly with Tom and his set.

Since Chris’ background is never further explored, memories of notable works about calculated upward mobility from “Washington Square” to “Room at the Top” stir up initial questions as to how much of a schemer Chris may be. But in every respect he seems sincere, evincing an honest interest in serious literature and opera, tastes that ideally suit Tom’s attractive sister Chloe (Emily Mortimer), who a bit over-eagerly takes Chris under her wing and into her bed.

With Chris’ road to success now all but paved with clover, there’s got to be a snake in the underbrush, and it comes in the dazzlingly sexy form of young American Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson), who’s Tom’s girlfriend but who strikes immediate sparks with Chris. An obvious tinderbox of trouble, Nola is a moody neurotic with a past who drowns her frustration over a stalled acting career with constant drink. Fully aware of its ill-advisability, nothing can prevent these two pillow-lipped sex objects from getting down to it, which they do during a downpour in a literal roll in the wheat during a weekend in the country.

Suddenly, however, Nola is history, gone from Tom’s and Chris’ lives and apparently from London as well. Chris and Chloe marry, much to the delight of Hewett family patriarch Alec (Brian Cox), who continues to favor Chris with opportunities in the family business world, and Tom quickly follows suit with a new woman. But after Chris spots Nola by chance at the Tate Modern, the juices start flowing all over again, this time in a torrent, which steers the story straight on a collision course toward tragedy.

On a scene-by-scene basis, pic’s midsection slows a bit, as Chloe obsesses over her inability to get pregnant while her husband, busy shagging Nola nonstop, becomes tortured by his increasingly untenable position between the two women. Heavy pressure from Nola eventually forces his hand, resulting in a morally ghastly climax redeemed by a genuinely inspired dramatic twist that beautifully and bitterly dovetails with the philosophical notion posited at the outset.

One immediate advantage of the film’s English setting is that it effectively prevents the young male lead from doing a Woody Allen imitation, as has so often happened in the past. Beyond that, there is an evident refreshment and restimulation that’s resulted from Allen’s immersion in a new milieu, a rarefied one not often depicted by English filmmakers these days. An assortment of mostly upscale locations provides a sumptuous backdrop that takes on added mood from the consistently gray skies, exemplary lensing by Remi Adefarasin and the overlay of excerpts from Verdi, Rossini, Donizetti, et al.

Cast is terrific. Rhys-Meyers, who has been flitting about the margins of real recognition for the past few seasons, comes further into his own with an excellent performance in the central role, one which requires him to be both genuinely ingratiating and entirely repugnant. More of a blond bombshell than ever, Johansson combines strong elements of sexuality, self-doubt and emotional insistence in an indelible portrait of tragic beauty. Mortimer aptly pinpoints Chloe’s over-availability as the initial source of her husband’s growing disinterest, while Goode nicely rounds out the young quartet as a smooth chap whose great looks, wit and intelligence seem virtual birthrights. It’s amusing to see Cox, so often associated with threatening or dicey characters, so smoothly essaying a generous man of means.

• Production: A BBC Films and Thema Production SA presentation of a Jada production. (International sales: HanWay Films, London.) Produced by Letty Aronson, Gareth Wiley, Lucy Darwin. Executive producer, Stephen Tenenbaum. Co-producers, Helen Robin, Nicky Kentish Barnes. Co-executive producers, Jack Rollins, Charles H. Joffe. Directed, written by Woody Allen.
• Crew: Camera (Technicolor), Remi Adefarasin; editor, Alisa Lepselter; production designer, Jim Clay; art directors, Diane Dancklefsen, Jan Spoczynski; set decorator, Caroline Smith; costume designer, Jill Taylor; sound (Dolby), Peter Glossop; supervising sound editor, Robert Hein; re-recording mixer, Lee Dichter; assistant director, Chris Newman; casting, Juliet Taylor, Gail Stevens, Patricia Kerrigan DiCerto. Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (noncompeting), May 12, 2005. Running time: 124 MIN.
• With: Nola Rice - Scarlett Johansson Chris Wilton - Jonathan Rhys-Meyers Chloe Hewett Wilton - Emily Mortimer Tom Hewett - Matthew Goode Alec Hewett - Brian Cox Eleanor Hewett - Penelope Wilton Inspector Dowd - Ewen Bremner Detective Banner - James Nesbitt Henry - Rupert Penry-Jones Mrs. Eastby - Margaret Tyzack

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Match point.

Former professional tennis player Chris Wilton's (Jonathan Rhys Meyers, "Bend It Like Beckham," "Alexander") acceptance of a job as a tennis pro at a swanky London club enables the working class Irish bloke to mix with the British upper crust. His belief in luck begins to be proven when his first student, Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode, "Chasing Liberty"), has a shared love of opera. Tom invites Chris into his family circle and sister Chloe (Emily Mortimer, "Dear Frankie") sets her sights on the handsome young man. Chris's attention is instantly attracted by the sight of Tom's sexy American fiancee Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson, "The Island"), but he settles for Chloe's comfortable wealth after Nola spurns his advances. Then Tom unexpectedly drops Nola and Chris decides to have his cake and eat it too. He's going for the "Match Point."

Laura's Review: B+

Writer/director Woody Allen ("Melinda and Melinda") tints his own "Crimes and Misdemeanors" with George Stevens's "A Place in the Sun," leaves his beloved New York completely behind for the first time ever and delivers his best film in years. If Woody has paid homage to Bergman and Fellini in the past, this is his homage to Hitchcock. "Match Point" isn't quite up to Woody's very best, but it features a craftily written killer ending, the players are beautifully cast and Emily Mortimer, in particular, is terrific in a difficult role. Woody tips us off to his seriousness of purpose with his musical selections, old scratchy recordings of operas telling of crossed loves, class, betrayal and death. His theme of luck, which Chris believes is far more important than morality, is represented by a tennis ball which hits the net, luck determining which side it will fall upon. His protagonists, Chris and Nola, are both not only working class, but not English. Instead it is their sex appeal which has ensconced them in the bosom of British old world wealth and these shared traits also bind them. The two trophies have the hots for each other. We hear little about Chris's background, but everything seems to go right for him. Alec (Brian Cox, "Red Eye," "The Ringer") and Eleanor Hewett (Penelope Wilton, "Calendar Girls," "Pride & Prejudice") want their baby girl Chloe to be happy and so Alec brings Chris into his firm where he appears to flourish. 'I don't buy into Eleanor and she knows it, but you are being groomed,' Nola informs Chris over a drink after the two bump into one another. Having failed another audition, a somewhat sloshed Nola also tells Chris that her mother could never hold down a job because she drank too much. As Chris is mobilized upwards by the family, Nola is looked down upon by Eleanor (who also drinks too much and who does not recognize her own daughter's under achievement) for her failure to get work in her chosen career. She bluntly tells her so during a country weekend and Nola makes a dramatic departure only to be surreptitiously followed by Chris. After a rain-soaked tumble, Nola refuses to continue the affair, so Chris marries Chloe. Then, in a clever visual mirror image, Tom marries, but his bride isn't Nola! Once again Chris runs into Nola and he pursues her aggressively, but when he is forced to make a choice between her or his cushy life he chooses status over sex, then preserves that choice by carrying out a dastardly deed. Allen puts his principal and the audience through the wringer in his final act. We see a horrible crime committed in a way that screams for justice, both morally and investigatively, and sweat as Inspector Dowd (Ewen Bremner, "Trainspotting," "Around the World in 80 Days") and Detective Banner (James Nesbitt, "Bloody Sunday," "Millions") dance around the truth. Allen lobs that opening ball towards the net again, but even as we see it fall, he keeps his cards aloft and pulls about a beautiful sleight of hand. Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays his type, the opportunistic bounder, well, although he provides little beneath the surface other than lust and an ability to deceive. Goode is also a type, the veddy, veddy aristocratic Englishman, a good chap on an even keel, a role Rupert Everett may have played in his younger days. His character is such a plot device, that when he marries someone else, we never even learn her name. Veteran Cox gives a slyer performance, the benevolent old man, seemingly clueless to ill intent but nonetheless a lion of his industry, his presence always felt even as he hovers in the background. It is the women who provide the piece more depth beginning with Emily Mortimer's mousy Chloe who wields passive aggression like a master player. Mortimer makes her appear shy as she pushes forth her agenda, asking Chris out under the aegis of friendly good manners. She covers for his 'boring' choice of chicken at a restaurant as humble modesty, steering him towards the more sophisticated choice of caviar blinis. Mortimer just nails the privileged daughter who expects nothing and everything, who pushes her agenda even as she appears to be surrendering. Johansson plies her husky seductiveness while revealing a messed up inner core, yet Johansson cannot rise above a crucial development which should gain Nola sympathy but instead turns her into a nag. As her luckier, if unacknowledged, counterpart, Penelope Wilton shows what Nola may have become instead, a somewhat ridiculous but indulged pet. Bremner and Nesbitt are saddled with lots of exposition and also appear overly naive, but they are both in service to Allen's nod to Hitchcock cops and achieve the assignment with wit. Allen may need to spend more time in London (his next film, "Scoop," is also set there and also stars Johansson) before he can begin to capture its flavor. In "Match Point" he uses his Big Apple template for the city of Big Ben, defining it via museums, trendy eateries luxury shops. He and production designer Jim Clay ("Stage Beauty") do better psychologically, moving Chris from a subterranean studio to environments encased in glass. "Match Point" has such a thoroughly satisfying jolt of a conclusion that it makes the film seem more original than it indeed is, but while Allen's twisty little dark tale may echo one of his earlier films, it feels like an auteur's reinvention. If I hadn't known whose work it was, I'd have been hard pressed to identify its author.

Robin's Review: B+

It's scary to think so much is out of one's control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net and for a split second it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward and you win…or maybe it doesn’t, and you lose.” These are the words of Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Myers), a former pro tennis player whose luck had failed him on the courts. But, when he meets Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode), the scion of a wealthy British businessman, that luck changes – or does it? – in Woody Allen’s “Match Point.” With the exception of a brief sojourn to Paris for an along-the-Seine sequence with Goldie Hawn in “Everyone Says I Love You,” writer-director Woody Allen’s works have always been set in America, usually in his beloved New York City. Allen breaks his always-in-America filmmaking dedication this time around, journeying across the Pond to London with his story about luck, lust, love and more. Chris is a likable young guy who takes a job teaching tennis at a swanky country club. He is hired to give private lessons to silver spoon-born Tom and the two become fast friends. Chris soon falls for Tom’s pretty sister, Chloe (Emily Mortimer), and they soon marry. The young tennis pro’s hard life and bad luck appears to have finally changed for the better. Except for one thing: Nola (Scarlett Johansson), Tom’s sexy and sensuous American-born fiancée. The attraction between Chris and Nola is intense but she warns him to not blow his now-pampered lifestyle by making a pass at her. The warning falls upon deaf ears, especially after Tom, with the prodding of his mother (who thinks Nola is just American trash and unworthy of her son), breaks his engagement. Chris and Nola begin a torrid but secret love affair that parallels his rise up the Hewett company corporate ladder. They carry on their clandestine tête-à-tête with Chris promising to leave his wife (and, of course, his new life) for the beautiful Yank. A wrench is thrown into the works when Nola announces that she is pregnant and the pressure she puts on Chris to get a divorce is ramped up to the extreme. Unless he does what she demands, Nola is fully prepared to tell all. Chris must make a fateful decision that could fix everything – or ruin it. Match Point” is most unlike a Woody Allen film that the prolific auteur has ever made. While you can see elements of his many other works – he supplants New York with London but the street scenes are an overlay of his beloved Manhattan – you never get the feeling that you are watching a “Woody Allen film.” In the past, Allen has paid homage to such film greats as Ingmar Bergman (with “Interiors”) and Federico Fellini (with “Stardust Memories”). This time around he does the same, but in a far more subtle way, for Alfred Hitchcock. Allen’s story involves deception, violence and lie upon lie as his main character, Chris, grows to love his new lifestyle but also wants the illicit fruit of Nola. What starts out as a poor boy’s rise to the top takes on very sinister qualities, indeed, giving Jonathan Rhys-Myers a complex, three-dimensional character. Rhys-Myers, who made an impression as the handsome soccer coach in “Bend It Like Beckham,” does a solid job developing Chris from a nice, though plagued by bad luck, guy to a hedonist who uses Nola for his own pleasure, her feelings and needs be damned. Scarlett Johansson is strikingly beautiful as Nola but is treated, by Allen, as an object – albeit, a gorgeous one - rather than subject. Emily Mortimer fares better as the loving, loyal Chloe, who is both friend and wife to Chris, making you empathize with her as you watch her philandering husband. Matthew Goode is likable but not very fleshed out as Tom. Brian Cox gives a fine performance as Hewett patriarch, Alec. Penelope Wilton, as Eleanor Hewett, is both protective of her children and a snob when it comes to Nola, giving dimension to her small maternal role. Allen pays attention to the tiny but affective perfs by James Nesbitt and Ewen Bremner as the cops investigating nefarious deeds and it is done with true Hitchcockian way. Techs are fine all around. Lenser Remi Adefarasin does a masterful job capturing Allen’s typical long shots of character interaction, usually indoors, while also taking every opportunity to dote, in extreme close-up, on Johansson’s full-lipped beauty. Production designer Jim Clay also does well in bringing us into the pampered stratosphere of the wealthy of London. You’re not going to get laughs in “Match Point,” of course, but you do get to see Woody come through with a evenly structured, interesting and, in the end, satisfying dramatic work that we haven’t seen from the filmmaker in a long time.

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Match Point

T he buzz from the American press about Match Point is almost intoxicating. Can it really be true that our country, our capital city, and the film production company created by our national broadcaster has revitalised the career of one of America's greatest film-makers? In a word, no. Or in seven words: I'm really sorry about this, but no. For its premiere at Cannes last year and its UK release now, Match Point had me sitting in the audience clenching my fists as the lights went down and wishing and yearning for this one to be the big Woody Allen comeback movie, absolutely willing it to happen.

It's not too bad; a Patricia Highsmith-ish thriller with a chill of existential pessimism, among some quaintly conceived English upper classes. There are moments of elegance and steel. It is stronger than his last couple of films, and the sheer prolific energy with which these pictures keep tumbling off the production line keeps us, the faithful, nourished with hope that if there is to be a new Late Period of creativity from the master, then Allen's magnificent work-rate might accelerate its arrival. But the problem with Match Point is that the dialogue is composed in a kind of Posh English that Allen seems to have learned from a Berlitz handbook.

Until now, it has been a truism that Richard Curtis is the nearest thing we have to Woody Allen, doing for London what Allen did for Manhattan, siting his comedies in a picturesque capital of his own imagining. Now, remarkably, Woody Allen has repaid the compliment. He has arranged for his characters to have their fateful and serendipitous encounters in upscale touristy locations that look as if they were filmed on Planet Curtis: Notting Hill, the banks of the Thames by Westminster, Bond Street, Tate Modern and West End theatreland.

Match Point returns Allen to the darker themes of Crimes and Misdemeanors, though the skulduggery and violence are here played out at greater and more laborious length. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is Chris, a tennis pro from Ireland, new in London, who begins a Becky Sharp-ish social ascent by romancing Chloe (Emily Mortimer), the daughter of a massively wealthy magnate played by Brian Cox and sister of Tom (Matthew Goode), the supremely confident young man whom he coaches at the club. Things go badly awry when Chris falls for Tom's super-sexy American fiancee, Nola, played by Scarlett Johansson.

Allen had originally set the script in the US, but the opportunity for financing from BBC Films persuaded him to translate it to a British setting. Not too much of a stretch, perhaps, considering Allen's high-end concerns, but a good deal is lost in translation, and he does not have what Robert Altman had in Julian Fellowes, the screenwriter for Gosford Park: someone who really can speak the lingo. Allen's Brit-dialogue sounds clenched, stilted and occasionally plain bizarre. If he was engaged as a script consultant, Fellowes could have explained to Allen that Tate Modern does not have the definite article, that we pronounce the name "Eleanor" with the accent on the first syllable not the last, and a thousand other solecisms. And - snobbery aside - people with pretensions to love high opera do not tend to adore the work of Andrew Lloyd Webber, or at least not without a great deal of pre-emptive English irony.

Rhys-Meyers plays Chris in a very opaque way, which is arguably just how this calculating character should be played, but it is difficult to tell how intentional it is. Mortimer is perfectly plausible as the sweetly shy Chloe, and Johansson is fiery and sexy, though for her, as for everyone else, there are no funny lines. The only actor who really does relax is Matthew Goode as Tom, utterly convincing and authentic as the young patrician. He is real. His dialogue sounds real. Everyone else is ersatz. Could it be that he was allowed to improvise his lines while everyone else was too much in awe of the director to depart from the script? Whatever the truth, Goode is a tremendous find.

Match Point has some interesting moments and a clever twist at the end on the theme of chance and fate. However, as Allen's next movie is reportedly also going to be set in the UK, he really is going to have to learn to speak British at something better than tourist level.

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