Match Point

Match Point

2005

Director: Woody Allen

Writer Woody Allen

122 Minutes

Woody Allen at his best who explored the question to what’s more important: luck or hard work.

Match Point is about former tennis pro who married into money, but has an affair with his friend’s sexy x-girlfriend. Jonathan Rhyn Meyers plays the former tennis pro, while Scarlett Johansson plays the x-girlfriend. And the classical musical score adds an epic romanticism and painful truth of this film.

“There are moments in a (tennis) match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second, it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward, and you win. Or maybe it doesn't, and you lose.” – Opening voice-over told by Jonathan Rhyn Meyers character, Chris Willton, while watching a tennis ball fly back and forth across a net, hitting the top, bouncing up, and pausing.

Chris is lucky, not skillful. And he has based his entire life on that. He was lucky to marry into money. He was lucky to land a good job. He was unlucky to get his mistress pregnant. And he was unlucky that the police found her posthumous journal.

But the above scene is both lucky and unlucky. Lucky for Chris, though unlucky to man who will take the blame for the crime he committed: murder.

Forced by his mistress’s decision to keep their bastard child, Chris intends to stage a robbery, steal some jewelry, and shoot his mistress in the process. After the crime is complete, he will throw the jewelry in the Thames and continue with his life, unphased.

But in the process of throwing the jewelry, a ring hits the railing, bouncing up, and lands on the pavement below. Thinking this could lead to his downfall, the ring is found by a man who already committed a previous crime, thus blamed for the robbery and murder of Chris’s mistress.

Like I said, lucky for Chris.

But this shot mirrors the opening shot, the one with the tennis ball striking the net. Because in this game – life or tennis – it is luck which way the item – ball or ring – falls.

Woody Allen once said, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” How’s that for luck?