It's hard to feel sympathy these days for anyone who makes millions off the backs of ordinary people. Even harder when they're beautiful to look at and wear Armani. Julia Roberts and Clive Owen star in Duplicity, a light tale of corporate espionage with a little romance and a lot of greed thrown in. Tony Gilroy, the talented writer of the Bourne trilogy, and who made his directorial debut with the much-lauded Michael Clayton which he also wrote, directs. With Duplicity, he further explores his affinity for globalization issues and the multi-national conglomerate as culture.
Two spies, Claire Stenwick (Roberts) and Ray Koval (Owen), formerly of the C.I.A. and MI6 respectively, retire to the better-compensating private sector acquiring sensitive positions in high-level security inside two behemoth corporations resembling despot-driven versions of consumer products marketers Proctor & Gamble and SC Johnson. Ostensibly they team up with the goal to steal a top secret formula for the Next Big Product that one firm is trying to get from the other, and sell it to a third party for an obscene amount of money. Double-agency and treasonous hijinks ensue, with much of the emphasis placed on matters of trust and vulnerability. If it sounds too much like your average male/female relationship, we have the corporations' uber-competitive/paranoid CEO's simultaneously plotting against each other for a parallel storyline.
Sounds fantastic! And relevant! And intriguing! But the gold remains in the conceit. However cunningly Gilroy sets us up with a promising opener (not to mention a fun if over-long title sequence), he soon lets us down when it appears things aren't going to build, but go in circles.
Duplicity's twists and reversals spill out in non-linear fashion, requiring some work on the part of the audience to keep the sequence of events straight. There is a symmetry to many individual scenes, played out either as rehearsal or performance of one kind or another, reminding us of constructions-- societal and dramatic-- and the different roles that we assume to assist us in our life dealings. But the device of disorder seems unrelated to the theme at large, present only as a trendy gimmick to keep the viewer off balance.
Quickly devolving into a superficial mashup of tired conventions, you could probably exchange the entire second act's script with almost any 70's industrial-complex thriller riddled with random lines from an 80's work-a-day romcom or two and not really notice a difference in the plot. Additionally, the self-reflexive text practically claims to be rich and successful, and while it may look good on paper, it's only a front for an arbitrary plot permitted even less dimension within Duplicity's painfully constricted PG-rated world.
The uninspired dialogue that passes for "witty repartee" makes me nostalgic for... witty repartee. If there had been any real chemistry between the two leads, it wouldn't be so noticeable that we never learn a thing about them other than a limited career dossier for each. In fact, the roles of Spy #1 and Spy #2 could have been played by any two humans who you could tell apart. Claire and Ray meet in postcard locations, debate each other's personal trust issues by rote, fade out on the implied sexual act, then retreat to their assigned corners while we are intermittently entertained by amusing secondary figures-- many, we're not sure who THEY really are, or whom they work for. Gilroy admits in a recent New Yorker interview that pursuant to the demands of the studio (by way of a focus group), additional footage was shot and a sequence reordered to help sort out the confusing storyline.
Have no fear, consumers. In spite of the modern look and feel of the film, Duplicity delivers the traditional goods. Incredibly, a seasoned female CIA pro, who has detachedly used sex in the past to get a job done, holds it against her male partner-in-time for doing the same thing for the purpose of achieving their common goal-- and with a mark who could hardly qualify as competition. Oh I forgot. Women are jealous and possessive and are driven to hysteria by their emotions. How quaint. (Don't get me wrong-- the scene where the annoyed Claire debriefs said mark was superb. It was the anachronistic nag-fest she threw later that was a step backward for believable female characters.)
Even though we're supposed to like Claire and Ray's conniving couple, and buy into THEIR greed over that of the corporate muckety-mucks', the payoff is so justly thin that it perhaps teaches a poignant lesson after all: the inevitable financial success of this film will make most of us realize just how under-compensated WE are when it comes to Hollywood's disbursement of grown-up fare.
By the sheer quantity of extraordinarily effusive reviews from the bastions of Old World Media, one might sense that the Newspapers and Networks are paying out big time in exchange for Uni's desperately needed P&A dollars because neither a slickly cut trailer nor two of Hollywood's top performers can bail Duplicity out of its dull-drum.
Two spies, Claire Stenwick (Roberts) and Ray Koval (Owen), formerly of the C.I.A. and MI6 respectively, retire to the better-compensating private sector acquiring sensitive positions in high-level security inside two behemoth corporations resembling despot-driven versions of consumer products marketers Proctor & Gamble and SC Johnson. Ostensibly they team up with the goal to steal a top secret formula for the Next Big Product that one firm is trying to get from the other, and sell it to a third party for an obscene amount of money. Double-agency and treasonous hijinks ensue, with much of the emphasis placed on matters of trust and vulnerability. If it sounds too much like your average male/female relationship, we have the corporations' uber-competitive/paranoid CEO's simultaneously plotting against each other for a parallel storyline.
Sounds fantastic! And relevant! And intriguing! But the gold remains in the conceit. However cunningly Gilroy sets us up with a promising opener (not to mention a fun if over-long title sequence), he soon lets us down when it appears things aren't going to build, but go in circles.
Duplicity's twists and reversals spill out in non-linear fashion, requiring some work on the part of the audience to keep the sequence of events straight. There is a symmetry to many individual scenes, played out either as rehearsal or performance of one kind or another, reminding us of constructions-- societal and dramatic-- and the different roles that we assume to assist us in our life dealings. But the device of disorder seems unrelated to the theme at large, present only as a trendy gimmick to keep the viewer off balance.
Quickly devolving into a superficial mashup of tired conventions, you could probably exchange the entire second act's script with almost any 70's industrial-complex thriller riddled with random lines from an 80's work-a-day romcom or two and not really notice a difference in the plot. Additionally, the self-reflexive text practically claims to be rich and successful, and while it may look good on paper, it's only a front for an arbitrary plot permitted even less dimension within Duplicity's painfully constricted PG-rated world.
The uninspired dialogue that passes for "witty repartee" makes me nostalgic for... witty repartee. If there had been any real chemistry between the two leads, it wouldn't be so noticeable that we never learn a thing about them other than a limited career dossier for each. In fact, the roles of Spy #1 and Spy #2 could have been played by any two humans who you could tell apart. Claire and Ray meet in postcard locations, debate each other's personal trust issues by rote, fade out on the implied sexual act, then retreat to their assigned corners while we are intermittently entertained by amusing secondary figures-- many, we're not sure who THEY really are, or whom they work for. Gilroy admits in a recent New Yorker interview that pursuant to the demands of the studio (by way of a focus group), additional footage was shot and a sequence reordered to help sort out the confusing storyline.
Have no fear, consumers. In spite of the modern look and feel of the film, Duplicity delivers the traditional goods. Incredibly, a seasoned female CIA pro, who has detachedly used sex in the past to get a job done, holds it against her male partner-in-time for doing the same thing for the purpose of achieving their common goal-- and with a mark who could hardly qualify as competition. Oh I forgot. Women are jealous and possessive and are driven to hysteria by their emotions. How quaint. (Don't get me wrong-- the scene where the annoyed Claire debriefs said mark was superb. It was the anachronistic nag-fest she threw later that was a step backward for believable female characters.)
Even though we're supposed to like Claire and Ray's conniving couple, and buy into THEIR greed over that of the corporate muckety-mucks', the payoff is so justly thin that it perhaps teaches a poignant lesson after all: the inevitable financial success of this film will make most of us realize just how under-compensated WE are when it comes to Hollywood's disbursement of grown-up fare.
By the sheer quantity of extraordinarily effusive reviews from the bastions of Old World Media, one might sense that the Newspapers and Networks are paying out big time in exchange for Uni's desperately needed P&A dollars because neither a slickly cut trailer nor two of Hollywood's top performers can bail Duplicity out of its dull-drum.