Matchpoint. Love All.

In Matchpoint, Woody Allen replaces classic Allen film hallmarks such as a gentle, sardonic wit, closely observed conversations between believable characters, and his own ugly but sympathetic mush with the tawdry opposite - sexual histrionics, plot twists which stretch belief, school play dialogue of the ‘by jove, I’ve got it inspector!’ variety, and beautiful, flesh-baring, but ultimately unlikeable leads.

Problem number one with this film is Jonathan Rhys Meyers. The jury has been out on this pouting Irishman for a long, long time - since he graced the screen as a Bowie-alike in Velvet Goldmine, looking fabulous while boring sane audiences witless. The next time I saw him he was the lust object in Bend It Like Beckham. He acquitted himself in that one – but he hardly needed to act. With this latest outing, the jury has returned a unanimous verdict - his repertoire is largely limited to playing the smouldering himbo, with his ‘wrong side of the tracks’ accent and morose demeanour written into the script to avoid the embarassment of watching him slaughter any other brogue or attempt to crack a joke.

Rhys Meyers plays tennis pro turned stockbroker-in-training Chris Wilton, who marries into money and privilege before starting a hot and heavy affair with a struggling young American actor (Scarlett Johansson). He slavers and pouts his way unpleasantly through the film, his acting crimes aided and abetted by Allen, or whoever wrote the shocking pick up line ‘has anyone ever told you you’ve got the most sensual lips?’ uttered to a similarly pouty Johansson. For the rest of the film we are supposed to believe that this sleazy character (whose one skill, we are told, is playing a good game of tennis) reads Dostoesvky and has a penchant for quoting Socrates to ghosts (yes, ghosts - but more of that later).

Which brings me to problem number two. Johansson, as Nola Rice, holds our attention admirably as the nubile object of the camera, and Chris’s gaze. She is clearly a superior actor to Rhys Meyers, but is confined by the script to two modes – glossy, undulating mound of she-flesh and screeching, hysterical mistress a la Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, only strangely muted and impotent. The difference with this film is supposed to be that, unlike that unreconstructed piece of 80’s misogyny, it is the man who turns out to be the villain of the piece, albeit one we’ve followed as the ostensible protagonist with bemusement and scant affection for the (2 hours?) duration. After watching him plodding his way uncharismatically through the film and cheating on his little sparrow of a wife while using her father’s power and influence, we are asked to sympathise with our hero’s decline and fall. In a scene which appears to have been intended to afford a certain gravitas and pathos to the character, he converses with his demons, Hamlet-style. Yes… this trivial, shallow, nasty piece of work has a dark night of the soul. By this stage there is not a dry eye in the house. But they’re not the sort of tears one suspects the scene is supposed to elicit from the audience.

As usual, Allen manages to capture a big city in all its excitement and beauty, but he hasn't done his research on the culture to which he has transplanted his latest New York tale. Thus we have a doddery, tweed-sporting, grouse-shooting patriarch of landed nobility spouting unlikely (and terribly nouveau riche) business verbs like 'focussing' and 'fast-tracking' when he approaches Chris about the possibility of joining the family firm to do business with the Japanese. Maybe in Manhattan, Woody, but it doesn't ring true if you're even slightly acquainted with the fusty English class system.

In fact, it's quite hard to believe this is an Allen film at all, given its reliance on hokey plot devices over some decent dialogue. It's a big ask indeed for audiences to believe all the coincidences that mysteriously occur. While all cinema relies on some suspension of disbelief, this film stretches the concept well past breaking point, introducing a string of unlikely sightings, chance encounters, ridiculous alibis, bit part players who know just enough and detectives who stumble across the right clues at the right time. It all starts to look and sound like a school play - written on the hop, with scene upon scene clumsily designed to ramp up the action on the cheap. Like when Chris just happens to see Nola at the Tate Modern and thereby resumes his affair with her… and the service man who just happens to be on Nola’s front stoop when Chris comes a-calling, and has enough knowledge to utter mysteriously that ‘she left yesterday’, but can’t tell him any more. Then there’s the friends of Chris's powerful inlaws, who, in a walk on appearance, announce that they’ve seen him hailing a cab round Nola Rice’s way – casting doubt on his fidelity in the mind of his wife, who is handily present - before exiting stage left. By this stage, I didn't care if the whole cast was interred in Pentonville for crimes against the noble profession of acting.

But even a string of lazily written coincidences might still have worked – indeed, they’d have worked well for a laugh in one of Allen’s earlier outings - if we had not also been asked to buy into a ludicrous cop show/CSI-style investigation farce nine-tenths of the way in, starring Spud from Trainspotting and the Northern Irish guy from Cold Feet. Spud and Mr Nesbitt throw around all sorts of Miss Marple suppositions, and can them just as rapidly, before deciding to close the case. At this point I was laughing hysterically. I can only hope this is what Woody intended. But I don’t think we can give him credit for that.