Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Best movie ever!

A Disappointing Continuation

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

I watched the DVD twice, and then a third time with the director's commentary, and still can't join all the pieces together.The basic story is clear enough, there are these two huge pharmaceutical companies in cut-throat competition to provide the consumer with such essentials as ... a new shampoo, a special car-wash, premium diapers, (you name it, they'll make it, and sell it), each has industrial spy employees with labels like "techintel" and "counterintel" and they get up to all sorts of devious activities to try and learn what the other is doing.Agents Ray (Clive Owen) and Claire (Julia Roberts) are at first on opposite sides, but later, they join together (socially as well as commercially!) to go for the corporate area.Duplicity is all over the place, they strive to get the secrets, but... how do they know they are not being duped themselves? They don't, and the viewers don't know either. Even the final revelations might be yet another piece of duplicity? The acting is great, but the confusion starts early with scenes that we are supposed to remember, and to know when they become relevant. ie, three years later... then 18 months ago, 14 months ago. Besides the two chief agents, there are back room analysts whose names and roles are a bit unclear. One particular scene involves CEO Garsik apparently talking to a double of himself, but only very briefly. Strange that this is not followed up?The support cast are really good, Carrie Preston, Tom Wilkinson, Kathleen Chalfant especially, and there are a few especially good scenes with good dialogue, but overall, it gets my rating of ..."could have been much better".

Competiting CEOs Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson) and Richard Garsik (Paul Giamatti) truly truly hate each other. Back in 2003 Dubai, Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts) working for the CIA drugs and takes advantage of Ray Koval (Clive Owen) working for MI6. Five years later, both are working in corporate espionage but are surprised that they're on the same team. Claire has worked her way into corporate security for Tully. Koval is working under Duke (Denis O'Hare) who is running the operation and works for Garsik. Tully is introducing something revolutionary and Garsik wants to know. Claire and Ray can never truly trust each other as spies for hire.Tony Gilroy is the writer/director. I like this murky complicated written story. I really like Roberts and Owen. It's a fun spy versus spy with twists and turns. They have great chemistry together. The drawback is mostly the product. It's a bit of a letdown and I'm not sure the final twist is as compelling as it thinks it is. It feels like a big artificial twist to pull the rug from under the viewer. And I don't think it makes complete sense.

Ray(Owen, charming and smooth) and Claire(Roberts, icy yet hot) are corporate spies with a past, working for two opposing companies which have a long history of hating each other. When Tully(Wilkinson, who does fantastic as usual), the leader of one of these firms, appears to have something big, Garsik(Giamatti, delivering both the talent and the humor that he has shown before), who runs the other one, wants it... bad. Will our two protagonists trick everyone, and make it big? Can they even trust each other, given their profession?Right from the opening, this is excellent. The dialog is slick and witty. Every twist and turn in the plot keeps you guessing. Some would say it's far too many... and without a doubt, someone is constantly, well, being duplicitous, in this. Towards other characters, and the audience. Those hoping for globetrotting won't be disappointed - Rome and the Bahamas are among the locations this takes us to. Production values are thus high - this looks and sounds amazing. And that without getting indulgent. The pacing is great(I would expand on why, but it would reveal too much), the 2 hours(or 115 minutes, if you don't count the end credits) fly right by. This is immensely suspenseful.There is some moderate language and mild sexuality in this. The DVD comes with a thoroughly interesting commentary by Tony Gilroy and editor/co-producer John Gilroy, and trailers for The Soloist, The boat that rocked and State of Play. I recommend this to any fan of (romantic and selfaware) comedy-thrillers. 8/10

"Duplicity" is a film about spies, although not about secret agents in the sense that devotees of Ian Fleming or John Le Carré would understand the term. Admittedly, the two main characters, Ray Koval and Claire Stenwick, start off working for MI6 and the CIA respectively, but they soon abandon their careers for the much more lucrative world of industrial espionage.The plot centres upon the rivalry between two multinational companies, Burkett & Randle and Equikrom. Ray works for Equikrom; Claire works for Burkett & Randle in their corporate security department. Or at least she ostensibly does. In reality, she is a corporate spy employed by Equikrom to steal Burkett & Randle's trade secrets, especially details of a highly secret new product they are developing, and Ray is her handler.Or is the true position even more complex than that? As its title might suggest, "Duplicity" is the sort of film where the audience are, for virtually its whole length, left in the dark as to what the true position is, as to who is trying to double-cross whom and who can trust whom. It gradually emerges that Ray and Claire are lovers, who are conspiring together to cheat both companies and sell the secret to the highest bidder. Or are they…….? As is common in films of this nature, twist follows twist; there is a neat twist at the end whereby Dick Garsik, the corrupt, amoral Chief Executive of Equikrom is hoist with his own petard.There is, however, to be no similar come-uppance for the equally amoral Ray and Claire. The film is sometimes described as a romantic comedy, but the emphasis is less on romance than on the characters' complicated scheming. It is essentially a disguised heist movie, with the heist movie's typically relaxed attitude towards those who illegally or dishonestly enrich themselves at others' expense. Theft and fraud are not wrong, provided that the thieves or fraudsters are cool and attractive, that their crimes are carried out with daring, style and panache and that their victims are guilty of some crime, if only of the crime of not being cool and attractive themselves. Julia Roberts, who stars as Claire here, also starred in the "Ocean's" franchise, which was based around a similarly dubious code of ethics. Other recent examples include "Entrapment" and the remake of "The Italian Job"; there appears to be a belief among Hollywood scriptwriters that women as attractive as Roberts, Catherine Zeta Jones and Charlize Theron are, or should be, exempt from the commandment "Thou Shalt Not Steal".This is a slick, glossy piece of film-making, but it suffers from two defects. We are unable to identify with its hero and heroine for two reasons. The first is that their lack of moral scruples makes them inherently unsympathetic. The second was encapsulated by Roger Ebert in his review of the film. Writing of the frequent plot twists, he said "'Duplicity' is entertaining, but the complexities of its plot keep it from being really involving: When nothing is as it seems, why care?" It is certainly not the only film to suffer from these defects- indeed, an increasing number of films in recent years, the "Ocean's" films being good examples, have also been made in the same style, weaving labyrinthine and less than plausible plots around amoral and less than admirable characters. Watching "Duplicity" I frequently found myself asking "Why care?" 5/10