Duplicity

Tony Gilroy has quickly become a favorite screen writer of mine. He is responsible for The Bourne Trilogy and Michael Clayton, which I put in my top 3 movies from two years ago. I love how different those movies are from each other, but how tight and amazing they all are. With Michael Clayton he directed his first movie and he is back doing double duty with this Clive Owen and Julia Roberts movie. This movie looks nothing like Bourne or Clayton. It looked like it had more in Common with Ocean's 11 than anything else. Plus, it brings back the explosive coupling of Roberts and Owen from Closer. Essentially this had everything I could need in a movie: Tony Gilroy, an Ocean's 11 style plot and Clive Owen. Of course, this is often a problem for a movie: My overblown expectations.

Ray(Owen) and Claire(Roberts) meet in Dubai in 2003. They sleep together, she drugs him and steals some files. Ray has been thinking about that ever since. She was C.I.A and he was MI6. Ray is now working for a secret task force trying to steal secrets between two competing skin care product companies. He joined the team late but is the handler for the person this team has inside the offices of the competitor. It turns out the inside man is Claire and Ray finally gets a chance to confront the woman who drugged him after a night of passion. However, everything is not how it seems. Are Ray and Claire playing the two companies off each other to steal industry secrets and sell them for an insane price ($40 million)? Through a series of sexy and fun flashbacks, the story gets pieced together and of course, nothing is as it seems. Ray and Claire spend a lot of time discussing their relationship in exotic places as they lay in bed post sex and everything comes down to trust. Can they trust each other? Will Ray ever get passed Claire drugging in him Dubai? Will Claire ever think Ray is not going to get her back for that? All through it all there is corporate espionage as the two companies are locked in a chess match for superiority.

What Tony Gilroy does here is combine the things he knows with some new tricks. The Bourne trilogy had globe hopping and Duplicity has globe hopping. Michael Clayton had questions of ethics and corporate double dealings and was framed by a flashback. Duplicity is a web of flashbacks and also concerns corporate ethics. However, Bourne and Clayton were deadly serious and Duplicity is big fun. Owen and Roberts are put in great and sexy outfits, with expensive accessories as they saunter through gorgeous locales. The couple has a genuine chemistry and in this film it is played for all kind of sexy fun. I am not sure Roberts is the actress I would have picked for a sexy character, but she makes it work with the help of push up bras and sexy clothes. Gilroy is a very sure handed director, trusting the audience will go with him as he only gives us bits and pieces of the story to keep us interested. Each of the flashbacks offers a new nugget of information as to how we got to where we are when the movie starts and I loved the way the flashbacks came in and out with the cutting and fading of the screen and jumping back into the action.

Duplicity also gets a nice helping hand from Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti as the corporate giants at odds with each other. The title sequence with the two locked in a slow motion fight is pretty hilarious and sets up that this is meant to be a fun movie. Wilkinson is more of a cameo, but Giamatti is used very much in a supporting role and he is always having fun when he gets to play outside the typically Giamatti role of a lovable loser. Wilkinson gets a very nice monologue and he does his classy Tom Wilkinson thing with it, but this movie is won or lost by Owen and Roberts and their chemistry. You have to believe they love each other and you have to believe they could double cross the other at any moment for the movie to work and they succeed on both counts.

The dialog is not as cutesy as the trailer makes it seem, but it is a little cutesy, which I like. I like dialog that is just a bit too clever for it's own good. I like people that say cool things while looking cool and being cool. I enjoy a movie that looks like an awesome vacation with high stakes featuring people who always remain calm under pressure. Gilroy has not used much in the way of wit in his dialog before, except for the part of the devil in The Devil's advocate and sounds good coming from him. I like Gilroy's serious films, for sure, but it is nice to see someone be able to do something completely different.

I do have two complaints though. First off, the main story is about skin care products, which is lame and it makes it difficult to buy into the stakes at times. The main product gets the stakes on track, but until we know what the main product is, the whole thing seems a little too silly at times, for these two people to risk so much on. My second complaint is the ending. I do not hate it, but I do not like it either. I am okay with my expectations being messed with and I am okay with a total fake out, but there was something in the execution of the climax that did not work for me. I understand the movie ends up less about one thing and more about the other thing, but I still was left kind of indifferent.

Those two things aside, the ride was fun. Tony Gilroy is certainly someone I am going to continue to watch for and enjoy and Clive Owen and Julia Roberts make a pretty damn good team. Plus, any movie that has an entire scene dedicated to two characters talking about how awesome Clive Owen is, wins.

Final Grade: B+