We went to see this film yesterday, since it got decent reviews. Very disappointing. Yes, Woody, we understand you nihilistic view of the world. After this many years of listening to you whine, we get it. But can’t you at least come up with a better way of telling us (again) without a hackneyed plot about sex and murder? You also could have edited out about a half hour in the middle somewhere.
The cast was uniformly terrific, with Scarlett Johansson being her sexy self and the British actors being excellent. A less dedicated cast would have doomed this film to complete failure, since it covered absolutely no new ground.
Now I’m a bit prejudiced when it comes to Woody Allen. In short, I never found him more than mildy amusing, and his films downright annoying. The saving grace of this film is that he isn’t in it, but other than that I have to give it a big yawn.
The part that could have been eliminated, IMO, were the two scenes with his tennis-playing friend, who served as a ficelle for him to spout off some plot elements that a clever 9-year-old probably could have figured out in a few minutes of deep thought.
But I thought overall it was a good film on the theme of luck. The opening freeze-framed shot and its later parallel were very visually effective.
I agree, prr and I liked it as a result. And it’s interesting; you mention the conversation with the tennis friend and something potentially to cut, but if you think about it, during the first encounter, the friend mentions how Chris could’ve beaten folks like Agassi “if the ball had just bounced one way not the other” (or something like that) - the point being that Chris had put himself in a position to be successful but luck had not favored him. Same thing in the story in the movie, with his luck playing out differently.
The overall commentary on the randomness of luck - or at least the explicit separation or moral/ethical behavior from the realpolitik of material/social success in life and the effects of luck - was interesting. You can be amoral but still lucky and there are implications for how your life will be affected.
That was the point I took away. But overall, I just liked the movie - the script, the acting…