On the surface, Match Point seems like it's going to replay the Crimes and Misdemeanors script.
Chris (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is a semi-pro tennis player who has decided he can't make it on touring circuit. As a result, he becomes a tennis instructor for the well-to-do at a London club. When we first see him, I think we're supposed to get the idea that he's playing the game -- not tennis, but social climbing. With a little luck, he can get in with a wealthy family. That's what ends up happening. He marries the sister, Chloe (Emily Mortimer), of one of his tennis club students, Tom (Matthew Goode).Does he love Chloe? Or does he simply accept that marrying into the family is what he needs to do to move up in the world? Chloe seems like a nice enough woman. She's by no means ugly, but I'm sure we're supposed to see her as plain, especially when she's compared to Nola (Scarlett Johanson).
Nola is really the woman that Chris lusts after, but her problem is that she's just a poor America -- and for a time, she was Tom's fiancé. Nola might be the woman Chris wants, but even if she was free, she cannot provide him with the status and economic security he craves.
Nola and Chirs start an affair, and like the mistress in Crimes and Misdemeanors, when Chris won't leave his wife for her, Nola won't go away quietly. In Crimes, the husband has his mistress murdered in a staged robbery. He makes it happen but doesn't actually do the crime himself. In Match Point, Chris stages a robbery and kills Nola himself. In both films, it seems like the husbands behind the murders will be caught. The police have even figured out what happened, but the status of the men involved make it difficult for them to believe what they know to be true. And Chris even made a huge error when he throws the stolen jewelry from the robbery into the river, but the last ring he throws hits the "net" and bounces back on his side of the "court." How unlucky.
But who knows how luck works? That ring, a piece of evidence that could have gotten Chris convicted, actually works out in his favor. The husbands in both films get away with the murder of their mistresses and live happily ever after with their wives as if nothing ever happened.
Both husbands would like to think they can simply carry on with life. What I like about Match Point, however, happens in the very last moment of the film. It's so, so subtle in some ways. The close-up on the face of Chris, for about a second, captures the quiver in his chin. He's still bothered by the fact that he got his hands bloody. And maybe doing it himself will make it harder for him to get over what he did. In Crimes, the husband does go to the mistress's apartment and sees the body, but otherwise he maintains distance from the murder by not doing it himself. He's not "haunted" by his victims as Chris is, and I should note that Crimes also ends after more time has passed since the mistress was murdered. Maybe with more time, Chris's chin will stop quivering.
The actions Chris takes to silence his mistress feel somewhat more shocking than the husband's actions in Crimes. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's simply because we see Chris reading Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment early in the film. That makes his murder of Nola feel a little more premeditated. Not that he ever had a thought to kill Nola before she wouldn't go away quietly, but he does seem somehow colder and more calculating. Not quite heartless, but definitely the type that will always do whatever he has to do to protect himself.
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