Review of Scoop (2006) by Stuart K — 01 Feb 2011

Woody Allen returns to London after the success of Match Point (2005), this time with a comedy murder mystery, it's actually great fun, with some of Woody's best one-liners to date, and a very impressive supporting cast.

This has respected journalist Joe Strombel (Ian McShane) returning from the grave with one more scoop, which he tells to American journalism student Sondra Pransky (Scarlett Johansson), which is to do with a series of murders involving The Tarot Card Murderer, a serial killer of prostitutes.

Pransky teams up with neurotic New York magician Sidney Waterman (Allen) who is over doing some shows in London, and it leads them to debonair aristocrat Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman), who Pransky falls for, and uses their relationship to find out whether Lyman is the killer or not.

This is a nice little comedy, cut from the same cloth as the Miss Marple films of the 1960's with some lovely visual touches and a cheerful classical score throughout, and a "Oh, my God!! Look who's in it!!" kind of cast, (look out for Julian Glover, Lynda Baron and Anthony Head).

Plus, Jackman makes a devilishly posh toff, and a quite underrated, understated film.