Up until the release of Match Point, every review of a new Woody Allen film seemed to start with a lamentation of how his recent output didn’t match the one from his glory days. Then came Match Point and the critics fell in love with Allen all over again, a goodwill that largely evaporated with the release of the comedy Scoop but which might partially return for Cassandra’s Dream, a dark drama again set in Britain that is not without the occasional laugh. If measuring with two yardsticks were allowed, it would be considered a fair but far from brilliant Woody Allen effort and a pretty good film if it had been made by anyone else.

 

Allen casts Scottish actor Ewan McGregor and Irish actor Colin Farrel as two lower-class Cockney brothers who, somewhat improbably seen their age, still live with their parents. (If this were set in Italy, this would have been acceptable, but in Britain?) Farrel loves to gamble, echoing the chance themes from Match Point, while McGregor helps out in his father’s restaurant until he has fully recovered from a heart attack. Both have big plans for the future, mainly inspired by the business savvy and good fortune of their uncle Howard (Tom Wilkinson, dependable as ever), who has several plastic surgery clinics around the world and who helps out his sister and brother-in-law and their children with generous gifts.

 

Things take a turn for the worse when Howard comes to visit. Farrel has gambled away a fortune after a short-lived good streak and McGregor wants to secure a property plan in California to impress his girl and make some money that will permit him to leave the family’s restaurant business. Howard is willing to help as usual, but this time he asks the boys for something in return: the elimination of a business partner who is about to testify on Howard’s somewhat fishy practices in court. Allen is purely interested in this set-up as a plot device -- an examination of business malpractice and its consequences this is not -- and this is typical of his entire treatment; it is pure storytelling, nothing more and nothing less.

 

In terms of production design, cinematography and score (by Maria Djurkovic, Vilmos Zsigmond and Philip Glass, no less), the film is not as inventive or sophisticated as Match Point, often preferring facile over imaginative solutions, though McGregor and Farrel seem to be having a ball (even if their accents are not always consistent) and especially Farrel’s downward spiral from lucky gambler to nervous wreck is a nicely modulated performance that wrings quite a few laughs from the poor man’s fight with his conscience. To kill or not to kill, that is the question.