The only thing you can trust about "Duplicity" is its title. Nothing else in this sleek, dizzying entertainment is even remotely what it seems to be. A throwback to the days of old-school caper movies like "To Catch a Thief," "Duplicity" is just the kind of sophisticated amusement you would expect from filmmaker Tony Gilroy.
The writer on all three "Bourne" films and the writer-director of "Michael Clayton," Gilroy has become a master of modernized tradition, displaying a gift for updating classic Hollywood forms with smart and sophisticated contemporary touches.
In "Duplicity" he's taken stars Julia Roberts and Clive Owen and put them into what is essentially "Michael Clayton Lite." Once again we are in the dog-eat-dog world of corporate malfeasance and industrial espionage, only this time it's played for laughs and romance. Sort of.
For if relationships are supposed to be based on honesty and trust, how do you deal with one grounded in dishonesty and mistrust? What happens when two masters of duplicity and guile, world class instinctive liars who could fool Old Scratch himself, think they may be falling in love. With each other.CIA officer Claire Stenwick (Roberts) and MI6 agent Ray Koval (Owen) have a professional tussle in Dubai in 2003 that leaves a lot of unfinished business behind. When they meet again years later, like recognizes like and they hatch a plan.
This devious pair exit government work and decide to run an elaborate scam that takes advantage of the periodic wars between rival corporations over a market-changing product, which they themselves plan to steal and sell to the highest bidder. The question is: Can they trust each other enough to allow that to happen?
The particular conflict that Stenwick (named, perhaps, to echo Barbara Stanwyck) and Koval insert themselves into is between two titans in the pharmaceutical world, Burkett & Randle and Omnikrom, companies whose bitter rivalry is as personal as it is professional.
The extent of that loathing is made clear in the marvelous sequence played under "Duplicity's" opening credits, a scene done without dialogue because, frankly, it's more fun that way. When B&R Chief Executive Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson) and Omnikrom chief Dick Garsik (Paul Giamatti) accidentally meet at a private airport, they can't help but get physical, going at it fang and claw like power-suited sumo wrestlers. It's the perfect setup for what is to follow.
