Match Point

When the main "hero" of Woody Allen's film (the supremely unsympathetic Jonathan Rhys Meyers) reads Dostoyevsky's ‘Crime and Punishment", it can't turn out particularly well for him... Or can it? Match Point is an excellent spectacle. It doesn't matter that almost nothing happens during the first hour that the viewer wouldn't expect, because what happens next and especially at the end makes up for it. However, I have to disagree with the opinions that there is no humor in the film. There is. It's black through and through, but it's there. (10/07/2015)

Romance novel material. Or maybe even lust novel. After many years of not such good movies, Woody really needed the ball to fall on the right side of the net, even if it meant a drop shot. Moving the acting to London giving it a hint of Hitchcock won him the entire match. And as his following movies show, this was no swan song or stroke of luck. Thank god. (26/12/2008)

"So who's my next victim? You?" The Master Woody Allen found a new muse, moved to London – and shocked the whole world with a total change of genre. He shocked me too, but in the most positive way. Woody touches the conscience of all sinners and wrongdoers while sympathizing with them carefully. By not appearing in the film himself, he gives the viewer a sense of a personal masterpiece and perhaps even confession. At this moment, I feel like we haven't had such a masterpiece from him in a sea of years, especially in a more serious genre. Moreover, both the incredibly seductive Scarlett Johansson and the incredibly beliveable Jonathan Rhys Meyers are going full force and make Match Point possibly one of the director's Top 3. (16/12/2006)

Unfortunately, the final quarter of the film is very different from the rest in terms of its concept, which downgrades the overall impression by at least a notch. From a fairly promising, decently acted, and emotionally powerful film, in the final moments it becomes a comical farce, humorous on its own but not quite fitting. Woody Allen makes the most out of the minimum, he pics talented actors and an attractive theme (a love triangle), places them in an even more attractive setting (English high society), and complements everything with sharp and dynamically written dialogues. But no matter how good the film may seem at the beginning, the ending is very bad and disappointing. Overall, it's something between three and four stars. (24/03/2006)

I like the love triangle according to Woody. I completely disagree that this isn’t a Woody Allen classic. It seems to me that it retains his style. And if he was improvising in a new direction, it was just an added bonus. What caught my attention was the Scarlett as a blackmailer and Jonathan Rhys Meyers as a man who is incapable of arranging his life rationally. But I don't mind at all that he did it irrationally... at least that meant there was more drama. Crazy, but good. 4 stars. (21/08/2011)