There's no denying it: Julia Roberts - here playing former CIA agent Claire Stenwick - is a star and we've missed her in recent years. British actor Clive Owen - ex MI6 agent Ray Koval - is watchable enough, so the pairing works quite well, especially when delivering some sharp lines from writer Tony Gilroy who also directs (the same twin talents that he exercised on "Michael Clayton"). Supporting roles are ably filled by Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson as rival entrepreneurs locked in a bitter conflict that seemingly only one-time spies can bring to a resolution. Throw in some glitzy locations - New York, Rome, the Bahamas - and slick and stylish cinematography and one has a good-looking movie, but not necessarily one that delivers.
In a film that could be called "Ocean's Two", the strength of the work is also paradoxically its weakness. The constant flashbacks are essential to Gilroy's calculated and entertaining - if utterly implausible - narrative but, after a while, they come to feel somewhat convoluted and contrived and the hair-raising plot has an ending that is thin to the point of baldness.
In a film that could be called "Ocean's Two", the strength of the work is also paradoxically its weakness. The constant flashbacks are essential to Gilroy's calculated and entertaining - if utterly implausible - narrative but, after a while, they come to feel somewhat convoluted and contrived and the hair-raising plot has an ending that is thin to the point of baldness.