Duplicity

I am a big admirer of Michael Clayton (my favorite film of '07) so I was more than ready for Tony Gilroy's second film as a director. While Duplicity isn't as good (or serious) as Michael Clayton, I found it to be an enjoying bit of meringue, full of humor and twists that kept me fully engaged.

In addition to Michael Clayton, Gilroy wrote the scripts for all of the Bourne films, and like those films, Duplicity involves a certain level of paranoia. Though the plot concerns corporate espionage, the spine of the piece is a romantic comedy about two people who can't trust each other.

Another consistency here is that Gilroy is working with a superduperstar, as he did with George Clooney in Michael Clayton. Here he directs Julia Roberts, who is less an actress than a force of nature. It's hard to evaluate a Roberts performance, because she's mostly called upon to provide the starpower she always does. I would suspect this would be the case even if she was asked to play Medea. Here she plays a CIA agent who, in the film's opening moments, makes a monkey out of an MI6 agent, who is played by Clive Owen, who isn't in Clooney/Roberts territory, but should be soon. We then flash forward five years, when both are working for a corporation looking to steal a new product from a rival company. As the story progresses, we get periodic flashbacks that reveal everything we are seeing may not be the truth.

Because this is corporate espionage, the principals are not in any physical danger. Law enforcement makes only one intrusion, to no appreciable effect. Instead it's all about money, like a high-stakes game of tag. And because the characters never trust each other, the audience can never be sure what they are watching. This makes for a lot of fun, although some critics have reported confusion. There are some plot holes, and bits that are never explained (at least to my satisfaction) but if you pay attention and have seen enough of these caper films, you should be able to figure everything out. The first twist comes when Roberts and Owen repeat a conversation, word for word, without acknowledging so. There is really only one explanation for this, and sure enough, we learn this at the end of the film.

In addition to Roberts and Owen, the cast consists of Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson as the rival CEOs. Giamatti is given license to mug to high heaven, while Wilkinson seems more like a real corporate bigwig. They are introduced in a highly stylized scene in the opening credits, a super slow-motion fistfight on an airport tarmac.

Those looking for more soul-searching angst that existed in Michael Clayton, or cliffhanging derring-do from the Bourne films, will be disappointed, but Duplicity is a pleasurable afternoon at the movies nonetheless.