CS Weekly Archive > Weekend Read > 3/20/09

You Are Trying to Kidnap What
I Have Rightfully Stolen

By peter clines

Screenwriter Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton) puts on the director's cap for the second time as he helms an intricate tale of corporate espionage, double-crosses, and forbidden love. But while there's lots to hold the audience's attention in every scene, when all's said and done it ends up lacking one fundamental element.

Duplicity

Tony Gilroy (also directed)

Ray Koval (Clive Owen) is a former MI-6 operative who's moved into the private sector, working in the counterintelligence department of a multinational corporation called Equikrom. Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts) is a former CIA agent who once screwed Ray (in a number of ways), and is now the assistant director in the counterintelligence department for Burkett & Randle, Equikrom's biggest competitor. To neither of their delights, Ray and Claire find themselves working together, because she's actually a double-agent working for Equikrom and he's her new handler. As it also happens, B&R is getting ready to reveal a mystery product their CEO (Tom Wilkinson) declares will dominate the market and crush all competition—a product Equikrom CEO Richard Garsik (Paul Giamatti) desperately wants. With days before the unveiling, Ray, Claire, and the rest of the Equikrom team have to locate and steal the secret, while Claire simultaneously carries out her B&R duties to baffle and stonewall the Equikrom folks at every turn with a variety of cheats and dirty tricks. But there's a bit more to this back-and-forth con game than first meets the eye, because Ray and Claire are actually secret lovers who plan to finance their retirement from the intelligence business by conning both companies out of the secret product and the millions it's worth. The only real question is…can they even trust each other?

There's a lot to like about Tony Gilroy's sophomore outing as a writer-director. His long history with espionage stories carries over well to the corporate world, and lets him combine all the best elements of a trickster story and a heist film. Duplicity is the ultimate long con, a story that unfolds across two years and 10 days at the same time, with each passing moment giving us a new angle to look at and a bit more information to consider each scene with. There are plenty of entertaining twists and turns, and moments that seem straightforward one moment take on new meaning in retrospect. It's a story where every supposed misstep leaves you wondering if it was planned or not.

Just as fun is the constant sparring between Ray and Claire. They're two people who've made a living out of lies, deceptions, and being constantly suspicious of others. No matter how much they love each other, and no matter how perfect they (and we) realize they are for each other, this part of their career keeps seeping into their relationship. It almost feels like destiny that they should end up together, even as it's perfectly understandable why they hold each other at arm's length.

It's also worth mentioning the amazing structure of the film. The story of Duplicity leaps back and forth through time, with flashbacks that start at Ray and Claire's first encounter and creep forward in time to the present. In a brilliant bit of writing, we get to see the same conversation play out again and again, in different times and from different viewpoints. As the audience comes to know these two characters, and their situation, a little better, though, it means something slightly different each time. This is unquestionably the work of a storyteller who didn't have to explain each page to a committee.

Alas, like many gems, there's a flaw at the center that distracts from all of this brilliance. The best cons or heist stories either have the perpetrators getting away with the goods, or the characters are so likeable you don't care that they don't. I won't ruin the ending for you, but when you do finally get there, you realize just how guarded Ray and Claire have been with themselves. They're people deliberately living lives only the most paranoid of us can relate to, and so few of us can connect to. The audience never really gets to know either of them past all those lies and deceptions and suspicions, and so at the end there's satisfaction for a well-played game…but not much else. With only the slimmest degrees of empathy for the artistes, the resolution of the elaborate con ends up feeling oddly empty.

With so much to like, Duplicity would seem like a slam-dunk, but it stumbles at the very moment it should be making the audience cheer. Ray and Claire are believable and interesting characters, but it's not until the film ends that you realize you never cared if they succeeded or not.

Duplicity
Universal Studios
Rated PG-13; 125 min.

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Peter Clines has had a lifelong love affair with the movies. He grew up in New England, where he studied English literature and education, and now lives and writes somewhere in Southern California. If anyone knows exactly where, he would appreciate a few hints.



Duplicity courtesy Universal Studios

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