Matched Point

Woody Allen's career has often been seen as swinging between the poles of comedy and his "serious" movies. Two years ago, with Match Point, he may have found the perfect equilibrium: a moral thriller brimming with irony and wit if not exactly laughs. His latest, Cassandra's Dream, his third consecutive film shot in London, seems aimed at the same sweet spot. If it doesn't quite hit—the plot, about two working-class brothers of varied degrees of dimness drawn into a murder scheme, isn't believable for a second (but, then, neither was Bananas)—the film remains gripping and compulsively watchable. It's dryly funny, too, though I'm not sure it was intended to be. (Maybe yes, since the biggest joke here, by Allen's lights, would be the suggestion that there is justice in the universe.) Credit should be given to the two leads, Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell, along with Tom Wilkinson, as the most undeservedly beloved uncle since Shadow of a Doubt; they and the rest of the superb cast play it like they mean it, investing Allen's sometimes shaky conceits with fever-dream conviction. But credit Allen, too, of course. Taken together, Match Point and Cassandra's Dream form a new creative hybrid: Dostoyevsky meets Hitchcock at his winking-est.

B. H.