Movie Review: Match Point

We Netflixed "Match Point" last night, which is the second Woody Allen movie I've seen. I must preface my review by saying that this movie disturbed me to the point where I could not stop talking to H about it last night, even past the point of sleep deprivation. I guess that's the sign of a good film, but I'm still upset about it.

Without giving too much away, the story is a classic entanglement of boy-meets-boy, gets invited into the family, first boy-meets-sister, sister falls head over heels, first boy also meets second boy's fiance and he falls for her. You know - the typical love story. Right from the beginning, I could tell that things would go south quickly, but leave it to Woody Allen to throw in enough twists and turns to keep your attention until the bitter end. It was kind of like a scary show - you don't want to watch because you know that awful things will happen, but yet you can't help yourself. The characters were well written and they were just ordinary people who were easy to identify with. You've either been like one of them or knew someone like them at some point in your life. Yet, I was not able to fully sympathize with any of the characters because none of them were either "strictly protagonist" or "strictly antagonist". At the end of the show, I was most upset by the universal truth in life - many people get away with atrocities against their fellow man and never suffer any external consequences. The only thing that made me feel better in the end was knowing that this character would have to live with himself and look in a mirror every day - something that I wish brought him an inordinate amount of misery.

Normally I would not be so vindictive, but I think that when an innocent human life is taken in order for someone to escape the awkward situation of having to be honest, there is no excuse for that. This is only one of the issues that "Match Point" raised. It also had to do with knowing the difference between love and lust, and not acting on every hard-on you get. After all, what good can come out of diddling your newly found friend's fiance in a field of wheat in the pouring rain? A bigger issue that I think most people would be able to relate to is that you never know the side effects of pressuring someone into doing things that they were only luke-warm about in the first place. Some people will suck it up and try to make the best of it. Others will try to keep their chins up, but have silent resentment that runs like poison through their entire body, and others will do the unthinkable. You could argue that the person was weak to begin with in order to agree to a life that they weren't sure they wanted in the first place, but money and comfort seem to make people complacent when it comes to decisions like that. In the end, each person is ultimately responsible for their own decisions and courses of action, despite the tendency to blame someone else.

If you like a movie with a message, believable characters, and a convoluted story that could only have a bad outcome, then you will like this movie. Even though it will take me a few more days to get over my intense feelings about this movie and remind myself that it is just that - a movie - I would still give it 8 out of 10 dancing feet. This is a good flick, and according to H, not in the typical Woody Allen style, which might encourage Woody-haters to give it a shot.