Tennis coach Chris Wilton meets Tom Hewitt, a wealthy student involved in opera. After a short while, Tom introduces Chris to attend the opera and Chris agrees to that offer. Chris meets the family and immediately attracts Tom's sister, Chloe. Chris started thinking of marrying Clawy, where he wanted to marry her for a job with her father, the millionaire Alec. Over time, a controversial relationship with Nola Rice, Tom's American friend, appears to threaten Chris's social status.
Match Point isn't one of his truly great films, like Annie Hall or Manhattan, but it's a very good one; a sign that a career that seemed stalled is purring along once more.
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.
Johansson finds her own speech rhythms in Allen's arch dialogue, and in the process, gives his film a quality that his recent work has often lacked, the recognizable flutter of a heart beat behind the façade of the character.
Suite101.com
September 19, 2010
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.
Match Point has a coiled, taut energy that's unusual for Allen.
Houston Chronicle
January 20, 2006
In every scene, Allen's direction is unflinchingly clear-eyed, and it's a pleasure being walked through London at the same unhurried pace that he's taken through Manhattan all these years.