Duplicity (Universal Pictures)
How About Some Simplicity
Duplicity is a movie with so many twists and tangles that it ends up unraveling the audiences patience, and sends them out of theaters exhausted and unamused. Julia Roberts and Clive Owen star in this too clever by half film about corporate espionage. It probably is clever but it is also so confusing that by the movies end you just dont care.
Claire (Roberts) and Ray (Owen) meet when she is working for the CIA and he is working for MI6. She apparently seduces him and steals some secrets. They meet again several years later when she is his contact for a corporate scheme to steal secrets. He is working for a company headed up by Richard Garsik (Paul Giamatti) and she is a spy in a company headed up by Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson).
The movie uses flashbacks to explain what is happening in the present and why. One flashback is okay; two flashbacks are tolerable; three is annoying and FOUR, forget about it. In this film you get whiplash from all the going back and forth.
Roberts has been off the screen since her cameo in Charlie Wilsons War. She is now the mother of three and much has been made of this. Well Julia hasnt changed, the roles have just gotten smaller. As Claire she doesnt get to show any of the patented Julia sparkle. She looks drab and acts drab.
Owen is handsome and masculine opposite her, but with this script there is no chemistry created. Deadliest of all is the fact you never forget they are acting. I never bought their characters or the plot that surrounded them.
In this film the sub-characters are the most believable. Giamatti and Wilkinson inhabit their characters completely while Denis OHare and Kathleen Chalfant impress as fellow corporate spies.
The movie is rated P-13 for profanity and mild violence.
Duplicity is not a good comeback movie for Roberts. She needed a film that lets her shine; this one manages to keep her beauty blunted and her personality under wraps. The combination of Roberts/Owen might have looked good on paper but on screen it is a zero. Throw in Tony Gilroys confusing script and muddled direction and you have a blueprint for disaster.
The faithful fans of Roberts will have to wait for this summers The Friday Night Knitting Club to see if the magic she exuded in the past still exists. Im betting it is still there.
I scored Duplicity a treacherous 4 out of 10.
