“Match Point” Directed by: Woody Allen

Starring: Jonathan RhysMeyers, Emily Mortimer, Scarlett Johansson and Matthew Goode

Rated: R (for sexual situations, alluded violence)

Running time: 123 minutes

Best suited for: Alfred Hitchcock (pre-1955) fans

Least suited for: Woody Allen (pre-1978) fans

I like knowing as little as possible about a film when I see it. And while I’ve been occasionally rapped on the knuckles by trivialminded critics for lacking in, shall we say, accuracy of minutia, I make up for their wrath in my joy at watching a picture with a fresh and unfettered perspective.

My best advice for you? See Woody Allen’s “Match Point” with as little foreknowledge as possible . . . which is going to make this column quite brief. And interesting.

Certain tidbits can be safely given away. Jonathan RhysMeyers plays Chris, a young Irish tennis instructor who’s pulled himself out of a lower-class upbringing and a mediocre professional tennis career, and gives lessons to the British upper crust. Chris is competitive and seemingly well-grounded (he reads Dostoevsky and likes opera— which, really, is the film’s silliest stretch). And it isn’t long before he’s taken under the wing of Alex Hewett (Brian Cox), a prestigious financier, and his family. Chris finds his head easily turned by their wealth and privilege.

“They have nothing but money,” he tells a friend, more in awe than with greed.

When the fetching young Chloe Hewett (Emily Mortimer) takes an interest in Chris, he seems to be on the fast track to success. The patriarchal Alex offers Chris a job in the family firm and pretty soon this ex-tennis bum’s into Armani suits and chauffeured town cars.

But Chris also finds himself smitten with Nola (Scarlett Johansson). The girl is drop-dead gorgeous, and she’s also young Tom Hewett’s (Matthew Goode) fiancée. Although Mother Hewett (Penelope Wilton) implies that Nola—a struggling, minimally talented actress, and an American—isn’t quite up to her standards, it deters neither Tom nor Chris. Chris can’t keep his eyes off her. When she can’t keep her eyes off him either, we realize there’s going to be trouble in paradise.

That’s as much as I’m willing to give away, except that if there were an Academy Award for a film’s trailer brilliantly misleading an audience, “Match Point” would win handily. I feel giddily bamboozled by the whole concept—expecting a typical Woody Allen “Crimes and Misdemeanors” sort of angst-filled, laugh-interrupted melodrama and instead getting a stripped lean, characterdriven thriller.

Instead getting pure, unadulterated Hitchcock. As in Alfred. As in Hitch’s darkest, noir-est prime (around “Strangers on a Train”). What Woody Allen elaborately sets up for us in the film’s first hour, basically a troubled and lusty young man with commitment issues, turns into a splendid case of misplaced passion and deceit and ultimately—oh, but I wasn’t going to tell, was I? Let’s just say that the ending is deliciously circular—a rewarding payoff moment for those of us drawn into the story’s stark and occasionally brutal reality of life above the economic stratosphere.

There are a few minor flaws in “Match Point”— none of which I can mention without becoming a serious spoiler— and noir lovers are apt to spot them. Suffice it to say that Chris’s ultimate run of luck (good or bad I shan’t divulge) is dependent upon the officious bumbling of others, and it’s in this area that director Allen leaves one or two obvious stones unturned. But otherwise, expect a treat.

Woody Allen has ventured into these dark, turbulent waters before, of course—most notably (stylistically speaking) in “Shadows and Fog” (1992)—usually with limited commercial success. Perhaps because Allen usually salves his dramas with liberal doses of sarcastic wit and humor, even his serious films can be uneven—even schizophrenic. His last “serious” dramatic phase was in the late ’80s, before his pendulum swing back toward the refuge of his comedic roots. “Match Point,” however, harbors no such safe haven; it unfolds with a slow burn, with little mirth, uninterrupted by the omniscient conscience of its creatorPerhaps, once again, Allen has learned to have faith in his audience. Or in himself. And in “Match Point” the effort pays offIn a nutshell: Woody Allen leaves the self-effacing humor and sarcastic wit out of “Match Point” and conducts a tautstraightforward, romance-infused thriller with a resoundingly triumphant payoff ending“Match Point” (scripted as well as directed by Woody Allen) has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay. And he’ll likely win on March 5(Ah, but will he show?)