Column:

'Duplicity' makes up for flaws with dose of fun

This Hitchcock-toned offer stands out amid competitors.

By Dan Moore

Published March 30, 2009

"Duplicity" is a self-conscious, high-toned movie, modeled after Hitchcock in almost every conceivable way: its heroes, movie stars-cum-spies, dash across a lot of exotic locales in formalwear while double-crossing each other every 10 to 15 minutes, all while engaged in romantic spark-throwing. Even the title and advertising campaign seemed designed to evoke "Charade," the last and best-loved movie to receive the "best Hitchcock film Hitchcock never made" mantle.

"Duplicity" finally double-crosses itself a few times too many times, but with so much turgid Oscar-bait to one side of it and so many animated monsters to the other, it's in a class by itself. Few movies this well made are daring enough not to take themselves seriously.

The conceit of "Duplicity," never once winked at, is these prototypical secret agents are working not for the government but rival chemical companies, whose corporate espionage offices are just as well stocked with spy gear as any Cold War bunker.

Ray (Clive Owen), formerly of MI6, and Claire (Julia Roberts), ex-CIA, have a brief and stormy past -- they slept together while in government employ and Claire took the opportunity to drug Ray and avail herself of his secret documents. They find themselves coincidentally reunited years later on a private-sector mission to steal a secret consumer item. On Ray's first job for his new boss, they meet for the first time since the affair and discover they're partners, or so we think. The rest of the film toys with this initial premise, starting with a flashback to their first encounter and moving deliberately toward the present.

Writer-director Tony Gilroy, whose last film was the perfectly plotted but embarrassingly serious "Michael Clayton," shows a wonderfully light touch with pieces of the Hitchcock template. He never goes explicitly for laughs, save for Paul Giamatti's broad performance as one of the CEOs, but the characters' deception and the movie's elaborately layered structure allows the dramatic irony to build as bits of flashback explain and undercut the present action. Gilroy handles the irony deftly, but rather than plowing it all into a lot of aha moments, as in "Clayton," he plays it for comedy.

Casting Roberts and Owen in the lead roles was a good instinct -- the film's throwback tone demands superstars in the Cary Grant and Grace Kelly roles -- though they don't quite work as the central couple. Effective and charming alone, particularly Owen in a scene that has him wooing a corporate travel agent as a southern-gentleman pediatrician, they don't feel convincing together. The screenplay gives them little time for warmth and feeling amidst the double-crossing.

The root of the story's problems is it has no status quo. There are too many twists and not enough stakes. In a movie that doesn't dangle death as a possible consequence (there's no gunplay in private-sector spying) we must at least know what failure will bring, both for the corporations and for our protagonists. Even if it's ultimately impossible to know what failure will bring, "Duplicity" stays funny and suspenseful while it tries to show us.