Match Point (flim): too long, but nicely cast with great twists

I have been abandoning streaming services for a minute while I watch films that were recommended from friends recently. We all know that you can get almost any film you want using torrents and as much as I like Netflix I find that most of what they have on offer is garbage and the number of older films that they have in their library diminishes as the days go by. I knew this was going to happen to Netflix because they got lazy and arrogant in their number one spot and it was always going to get bad especially when they started to have a standpoint of "we will do whatever we want." Yeah, and so will your customers apparently.

So my friend that has been recommending movies to me has been correct about whether I would like the 3 times in a row now so I am hoping that he can come up with other recommendations in the future.

Match Point was yet another movie that I had never heard of and I can only guess that this might have been because this is a Woody Allen film and I tend to ignore all of those.

This is a tragic love story disguised as being about sports. If you don't like tennis movies - I personally quite like them - then you don't have to worry because aside from the first 20 minutes or so where we are introduced to the main characters and how they came to know one-another, the film doesn't really have much to do with tennis, or any other sport, at all.

Instead it has more to do with chance encounters in life and how they may not seem significant at the time and how these encounters can have dramatic effects on how the rest of our life plays out. If you think about a failed or successful romantic relationship you have ever had in your own life it is pretty crazy when you determine all of the very specific and mostly based on luck factors that were involved in you ever meeting that person to begin with.

Match Point explains all of this is a very succinct way after a brief monologue and comparison to tennis about how there are times when the ball strikes the top of the net and there is a brief moment where luck is all that determines the outcome: Will you get a lucky point, or will the ball bounce back on your own side of the net?

The main character Chris Wilton we are introduced to right away. He is an ex tennis star of sorts that lost interest in the tours and the stress of travel that comes along with them who decides to become a tennis pro teacher at a club in London and of course is hired right away. Through chance assignment of students he ends up partnered with a man who just happens to share the same interests as he does and they become friends. As it turns out this friend named "Tom" is part of an extremely wealthy family with connections to everything. Chris ends up getting involved with the family and becomes an important part of it when he starts dating Tom's sister "Chloe."

Things twist and turn and you can see it coming from a mile away when he takes an immediate interest in Tom's fiancé Nola who is brilliantly played by Scarlett Johansson.

Despite being in a relationship with Chloe and being best friends with Tom, Chris still pursues her even though he knows that if they were ever found out that it would completely destroy this new, successful life that Chloe's family has basically engineered 100% of. A great tension is built in the movie as they start becoming more and more daring in their meeting with one another.

I'm not going to spoil the big parts of the film but just know that this movie is very very good. I do think that it is too long and I ended up skipping probably at least 20 minutes of the dialogue and I was no worse for wear having done so. I still knew all that was going on in the movie despite having done this.

One thing I would say that Woody Allen did extremely well in this movie is the creation of tension. Chris and Nola seem to be just a few seconds from getting figured out almost any time they are around one another and this just builds and builds all the way to the film's ending that even if you could see it coming to a certain degree, will shock most viewers.

I really enjoyed this film because once it is over you have a sense of being able to relate it to your own life and how chance encounters define who we are. It might not be a marriage into a wealthy family and then a meeting of your perfect partner shortly thereafter as is depicted in the film but back before Tinder and other things like that I believe that most if not all of our friends and lovers were determined almost entirely by blind luck - which is the entire point of the film.

I love a film that makes you think about it after you have finished watching it and then can reflect on how it applies to your and probably everyone else's life.

Should I watch it?

This is one of the better films I have seen this year even though this movie was released in 2005. I think that most people will appreciate all of what is in this film even though I think it is somewhere around 20-30 minutes longer than it needed to be. This is forgivable though because the overall message of the film is very profound. I believe that despite the movie's shortcomings that it has a very powerful message that extends well beyond the duration of the runtime. Highly recommended.