Match Point

First off I must say I make a point of not seeing Woody Allen films. He's creepy and his movies are boring. There was two real reasons for seeing Match Point those being, Woody isn't in the movie and it stars Scarlett Johansson. If Woody had been in this one like most of his other films even Scarlett wouldn't have gotten me to the theater. And just like all other Woody Allen films it was slow. Luckily it had a good enough story to keep it from being boring. And the only thing that even made it worth the money to see it were the performances of Scarlett and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. The story was not at all what I thought it was from the previews.


Spoiler Alert:


So from the previews I thought it was about a married guy who has an affair. Turns out that isn't quite how it goes.

Chris (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) actually meets Nola (Scarlett Johansson) not long after he's met Chloe (Emily Mortimer) and before they have really started dating. But Nola is dating Tom (Matthew Goode) who is Chloe's brother. Well of course Chris is immediately taken with her and the two couples begin hanging out and he really only wants to spend time with Chris and Nola so he can see Nola. He doesn't really love Chloe he just loves what her father can give him which is a big time job to make lots of money. So he goes ahead and marries her. I wouldn't much like his character for having an affair after they were married but I absolutely loathed him when it turned out that it started before they were married.

After Chris and Nola break up she disappears for awhile and then reappears one day. He runs into her at an art gallery and soon their affair takes off in full. Being the awful man that he is he wants to blame the affair on Chloe's desire to have a kid and thus their bland and scheduled sex life. Next thing you know of course Nola is pregnant. He keeps saying he's going to leave Chloe and we all know that he won't and you know Nola knows it too. This does lead to the best scene in the whole movie when Nola shows up one morning outside of Chris and Chloe's building having discovered he lied about being out of the country and she starts screaming about wanting to see Chloe and he's trying to get her in a cab. It's pretty sad that in a drama/thriller the best scene is actually rather comical. She of course threatens to tell Chloe. Leading to suspenseful ending.

Actually it's neither suspenseful or an ending. Chris plots to kill Nola and as part of his plan kills her elderly neighbor. As if I didn't hate his character enough already. This is a moment when things get a little more lame. He kills them with a shot gun. But he kills the neighbor a good hour or more before he kills Nola but no one seems to have heard the shot gun blast since no one called the cops. Yeah I'm really buying that one. There is a bit of an investigation into the murders but he managed to make it look like a robbery so with the exception of one cop that's what everyone thinks it is. At this point the ending just begins to drag and drag. It's probably a good 15 minutes longer than it needs to be. The damn thing would have had a much better ending if it had ended when he had his little breakdown with Nola and the neighbors ghosts talking to him and Nola telling him he did a sloppy job. I would have preferred the open ended ending of wondering if he'd get caught and how to the one where he got away with it and goes on to have a child with Chloe.



Went to a matinee of this one and that is all it is worth.