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Sexy Plotters Put Fun In 'Duplicity'

Universal Pictures

Ex-CIA officer Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts) and former MI6 agent Ray Koval (Clive Owen) are spies-turned-corporate operatives in the midst of a clandestine love affair.

By KEVIN WALKER | The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 19, 2009

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It's a Tony Gilroy movie, so you know going in that it will be smart, funny and (perhaps overly) complicated. "Duplicity" delivers on all three counts - and with Clive Owen and Julia Roberts starring, it throws in sexy, as well.

Sounds terrific. The only downside is the film is not quite as smart as it wants to be and falls back on that old standby - flashbacks - to make most of the film's big revelations.

By the time the two hour-plus movie got to the last few flashbacks, the sighs from the crowd at the packed screening I attended became louder and louder, as if a collective frustration was growing with the movie's main conceit (which is, essentially, that you don't really know what's going on until one of many flashbacks fills in the details).

That said, the movie is easily among the smartest mainstream movie releases this year, and the two leads, especially Owen, are up to the task.

The movie opens in 2003, when British agent Ray Koval (Owens) successfully picks up American Claire Stenwick (Roberts) at a party. Unknown to him, she's a CIA agent looking to steal secrets he has stored in his hotel room - a feat she pulls off with relative ease, but only after their encounter becomes intimate.

He wakes up extremely unhappy.

Flash forward five years, and the two are corporate spies in New York City, working for rival companies led by CEOs who hate each other: Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson, always good) and Richard Garsik (Paul Giamatti in the film's most memorable performance).

Gilroy, who both wrote and directed, provides one of the better opening credit scenes in recent memory, as Tully and Garsik break into a fist fight at an airport. It's one of many moments both subtle and overt that skewer corporate culture, from the executive egos to backstabbing employees.

Gilroy (who wrote all three "Bourne" films and wrote and directed "Michael Clayton") gives us two paranoid, deceptive and very sharp lovers in Koval and Stenwick. They take all the doubts and insecurities one feels when becoming romantically entangled with someone and magnify them to ridiculous levels. It's fun to watch.

As for the plot, it would be criminal to give much away. Suffice it to say Koval and Stenwick form a partnership to scam their corporate bosses and steal an extremely valuable piece of information. Suffice it also to say that you can't trust anyone.

For lovers of spy movies, that's half the fun.