We Offer A Bird's-Eye View of the Big, the Bad and the Barest Movies of the Holidays

(4 of 4)

Slick and pretty, Chris Wilton (Rhys-Meyers) is an ex--tennis pro with the schemer's gift of diffident charm: he seems to need so little that the upper class lavishes its largesse on him. What he wants is to be rich, so he weds Chloe (Mortimer), an heiress. But he also loves danger, as incarnated by a fellow outsider, luscious Nola (Johansson). "What I have is sex," she observes. "No one's ever asked for their money back."

Allen's sharpest film in a decade (granted, a pretty weak decade) amasses all the fixings of a sexy thriller: a sly young man on the make, a femme fatale worth killing for, an inconvenient pregnancy, a secret diary. By relocating his milieu to England, Allen has an ideal setting for class animosity and intrigue in the lightly lethal spirit of Kind Hearts and Coronets. There's sultry chemistry between the leads: Rhys-Meyers, who has the pouty sensuality of a Jude Law left out to spoil, and Johansson, with the humid allure of a classic noir blond. When they get to canoodling and conniving, you won't ask for your money back.