Movie Review: Duplicity. A Spy Flick for Adults
Julia Roberts and Clive Owen Reunite as Double Agents in Love
May 5, 2009
Film critics have, for the past few years, been lamenting the lack of Hollywood films for grown-ups. That is to say, well-made, well-written star vehicles that don’t feature guys in capes. So when one comes along it’s cause for celebration.
Tony Gilroy Directs Duplicity - A Master of Corporate Malfeasance
Duplicity was written and directed by Tony Gilroy, the man responsible 2007’s Michael Clayton (another smart, slick film for adults) as well as the scripts for the Jason Bourne films and the recent Russell Crowe film State of Play. He’s long been known as a script doctor in Hollywood circles, and Duplicity has similar themes to Clayton and State of Play, particularly that of corporate espionage.
Julia Roberts and Clive Owen star as Claire and Ray, two former intelligence officers who now work in the private sector. They first meet (apparently) at an embassy party while still working for their respective governments, but their subsequent meeting is repeated over and over, in different times and places, until the audience isn’t sure anymore just how long they’ve known each other and what part of their relationship is real.
They go to work for corporate giant Equikrom – headed by Paul Giamatti’s Dick Garsick – but Claire is under cover at rival Burkett & Randle, pretending to work security and counter-espionage for CEO Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson). The levels of deceit keep piling up: Claire and Roy are gaming their bosses, their co-workers and each other. The story keeps folding in on itself, forcing the audience to pay close attention, as any small detail could be a clue to where the story is going.
Julia Roberts and Clive Owen: Reunited Five Years Later
Roberts and Owen play well off each other. They starred together in 2004’s Closer, where Owen blew Roberts (and everyone else) off the screen, but he tones down his intensity here, while she ratchets up her seduction quotient until Claire is a believable foil for Ray. Gilroy, who managed to make George Clooney look tired and defeated in Clayton, here bathes his stars in golden light; the European scenes are like visual honey. And Gilroy’s a writer who trusts his audience to keep up; expositionary dialogue is kept to a blessed minimum.
Of the two titans of industry, Giamatti’s got the better, funnier role; Wilkinson, so brilliant opposite Clooney in Clayton, isn’t given much to do beyond a hilarious slo-mo fight over the opening credits. And the final twist of the plot disappoints, not because it isn’t clever, but because it succeeds only due to a sloppiness in counter-intelligence unbecoming to former CIA and MI6 agents. But Duplicity’s a spy flick without gadgets, explosions or even much in the way of fisticuffs, which, in this day and age, makes it a minor miracle of a film.
