A companion piece to Woody Allen's Match Point only insofar as it prolongs his revitalizing sojourn in England. The half-year interval between their releases is nothing out of the ordinary for the chop-chop Woodman. Nor is the repeat appearance of Scarlett Johansson in the female lead any more remarkable than repeat appearances in the past by Diane Keaton or Mia Farrow. And the mood, in sharp contrast to the immediate predecessor, has turned decidedly light and playful, which is to say that when (inevitably) the filmmaker contemplates death, it's in childish terms of a literal barge on the River Styx, manned by a scythe-wielding Grim Reaper. The strictly functional comedy-thriller plotline is more on the order of Manhattan Murder Mystery, albeit with an element of the supernatural. There is no earthly reason, outside of the bold harmonies between the whiny older man and the throaty young woman, why the Allen character should be dragged along by the Johansson on this Nancy Drew adventure ("Excitement in my life is dinner without heartburn after it"), and the steady manufacture of amusing lines runs out of steam toward the finish, and the plot premise will not stand up to scrutiny from the vantage point of the denouement. But none of that detracts from the generous supply of chuckles and cackles strewn along the way, still less does it detract from the calm and assured camera that Allen brings to the proceedings (in the right place at the right time for the right duration), and still less does it detract from his mastery and durability, at age seventy, as a comic leading man, defying every precept of polish and precision, creating a persona dependent upon verbal groping and fumbling and sputtering and stumbling, mining a private vein we might label as Lifelike Stylization. With Hugh Jackman and Ian McShane. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd