Allen rebounds like a tennis pro

It’s been a long time since you’ve heard anyone say, “Hey, man, have you seen the new Woody Allen movie?” Not with any sense of excitement, anyway. But that’s all changed with “Match Point.” No, with this film, Allen’s latest, you’re hearing his best reviews in more than a decade.

And he deserves them. “Match Point” is a traditional noir, placed in London, with bits of “Shadow of a Doubt,” “Dial M for Murder” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley” tossed into a script that takes you to places you never expect.

I included the first two films, both of which were directed by Hitchcock, for obvious reasons. The “Ripley” film, which came from the twisted mind of Patricia Highsmith , is appropriate because of the way that Allen’s protagonist acts out – namely, in an inherently predatory manner.

That’s the character played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers , a former – and, he says, failed – tennis pro who takes a job as tennis instructor with a posh London club. In the process, he meets and befriends a rich guy (Matthew Goode). Pretty soon the rich guy is inviting Rhys Meyers’ character to the opera and introducing him to his parents (especially Dad, played by Brian Cox ) and his sister ( Emily Mortimer ).

All seems well, especially since it’s fairly clear that the sister has decided to snare our protagonist. And then Scarlett Johanssen enters the scene. Johanssen, who is the rich friend’s fiancée, is sex on a stick. And our ambitious tennis player decides to take a lick.

This, naturally enough, betrays the guy’s fatal flaw. And it’s what provides the movie’s tension. Because, as in most movies that include sex in the mix, the need to couple leads to disaster.

But I’m going to leave things here. It’s enough to say that the film is well thought out in how it takes us into a noir-like world of claustrophobic tension , a world in which one fatal step leads to the next. And yet the film proceeds to an ending that, for most of us, comes as a surprise.

Almost as surprising as the fact that it springs from the mind of a filmmaker whom many of us long ago wrote off as an artistic has-been.