Woody Allen has made another movie, the 510th of his career. This one's in the serious thriller vein of his Match Point, which starred Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as a horny tennis player who got mixed up with a crazy woman played by Scarlett Johansson. The good news about Cassandra's Dream is that it doesn't star Scarlett Johansson. This is the first Woody Allen movie in recent years that hasn't featured his buxom muse and, not coincidentally, it's the best movie he's made in that span. I use the term "best" reservedly by the way. It's not like it has much competition. Match Point was at most passable, and Scoop was so God-awful, I would not have minded if Woody had simply hung up his view-finder forever afterward, and retired to a life of banging his daughter until the inevitable on-set of senility.Cassandra's Dream stars two pretty good actors who aren't bad to look at either - Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell. They play brothers who are both pretty much losers, who aren't willing to accept their loserdom, and become embroiled in all kinds of nasty financial difficulties as a result. It sounds like the set-up to one of those incredibly depressing, documentary-like Ken Loach movies about miserable, squalid people being ground down by the system - but no, it's a Woody Allen movie from his mid-tempo British thriller phase. Basically, it plays like an above-average English TV drama, something that might star Helen Mirren, and get run on BBC America to enormous acclaim.
Colin and Ewan make this movie worth watching. Farrell plays the greasier brother, who works at a garage and is always losing huge sums of money in poker games. McGregor, by comparison, has his shit together: He works at their father's restaurant, and is a more-or-less responsible adult, but he's plagued by ambition. McGregor is always entering into schemes - he's just smart enough to find opportunities, but not smart enough to make anything out of them. Things get complicated for Ewan when he becomes enamored of an actress played by Hayley Atwell, whose body makes one think of Scarlett Johansson, but whose talent makes one think of anyone but Scarlett Johansson. Ewan wants to nail this broad bad. Unfortunately, he's broke. He and Colin both get themselves up to their necks in debt, and have to prevail upon a rich relative (Tom Wilkinson) to bail them out. Their uncle is willing to save them, but only if they do him a certain favor...
Ha...you thought I was going to tell you. But I'm not. The movie unfolds in twisty thriller fashion and I hate spoilers.
As thrillers go, this one is pretty effective. Woody is an old pro and the movie has that quality of a well-made, modest boutique production - it's like the stuff Claude Chabrol has been doing for about the last twenty years. It's not exactly edge-of-your-seat, but it does keep you interested. And did I mention Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor are in it? They're not as much fun to look at as Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, but they're okay. The movie is definitely less annoying than most of what Woody's been churning out since he became irrelevant (I'm so glad we're beyond the point where we have to pretend to love everything Woody does. Really, some of his '80s stuff was horribly overrated. Hannah and Her Sisters? Puh-leeeeeeze).
I give Cassandra's Dream 3 Chips Ahoy out of 4. It's rated PG13 for drug use, discreet murder and Philip Glass music.
