A caper with class

Duplicity is a funny, intricately
plotted romantic thriller

SOPHISTICATED SPIES: Clive Owen and Julia Roberts

by MARK SLUTSKY

You’ll be forgiven if you’ve confused The International and Duplicity. Both films, opening within a month of each other, star Clive Owen, and both are twisty adventures that take their characters to picturesque locations around the globe. But the similarities really do end there; while The International is a clenched-jawed and sombre thriller about evil banks and African wars, Duplicity is something much lighter—a funny but intricately plotted romantic caper.

It’s pretty great. Duplicity is written and directed by Tony Gilroy, who wrote all three Bourne movies and both wrote and directed 2007’s admirable if over-praised Michael Clayton, and clearly the guy knows how to craft a smart thriller. In this one, Owen plays opposite Julia Roberts, who, like his character, is an ex-intelligence agent gone into the private sector. They’ve both become embroiled in the conflict between two large corporations, headed, respectively, by feuding CEOs played by Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson (the way Gilroy communicates their backistory is one of the film’s best jokes).

It would take far too much space, and spoil too much of the fun, to reveal the complexities of the movie’s plot. I can say that it involves corporate espionage, though, and a lot of the fun has to do with the Byzantine machinations of each company’s internal security departments. The best part, really, is that these corporations aren’t involved in international arms dealing or sinister political plotting; they’re hygiene companies, basically soap and shampoo producers, and the casual fact of that is a very funny and smart move by Gilroy (he never milks it for jokes the way the Coens would, too). There are some great, very tense sequences but it just occurs to me now that I don’t think you see a gun in the entire movie.

I had some reservations about her going in, but Roberts really pulls it off, and the chemistry between her and Owen is great and often very funny, their story gradually being revealed in a series of well-constructed flashbacks. What Duplicity really reminded me of is Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight, still a high-water mark for the sexy, sophisticated caper genre, and that comparison is meant as high praise indeed.

Duplicity opens this Friday,
March 20