MOVIE REVIEW: DUPLICITY

DUPLICITY

Six of Seven Cows

Someone in Hollywood is fool enough to think a sophisticated, wry, and ever-so-clever movie about corporate espionage can find an audience in our increasingly shallow culture. God bless them. Duplicity is easily the best thing I’ve seen in a theater since Zoolander – my personal yardstick for great filmmaking.

                 

Starring Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, Duplicity is a jewel. Honestly, there’s more entertainment during the opening credits than most films ever achieve, and while the actors, Owen especially, are spell-binding the true credit goes to the writer. Tony Gilroy has written some of the best dialog I’ve ever seen, and Roberts and Owen deliver it with uncanny timing and deadpan hilarity. I love this movie.

                 

Roberts and Owen play former spies now engaged in corporate espionage, caught up in a rivalry between two business titans played by Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson. Wilkinson is always good, but Giamatti is a bit of a phenomenon. Not handsome, nor possessed of great charm or charisma, he simply delivers uniformly great performances film after film, and his work in Duplicity is marvelous. Both manic and conniving, he steals every scene he’s in, and he’s playing against heavyweights here.

                

 Julia Roberts has never been a favorite of mine. I’ve always thought her vastly over-rated, more a product of good press than good acting. Well, I stand to be corrected. In Duplicity she’s good, standing toe-to-toe with Owen and holding her own. Clive Owen, I’m ashamed to say, has largely escaped my notice, but I simply can’t think of another actor that could have played this role. He owns not only his role as Ray Koval, but very nearly steals the movie – playing beside lesser talent he almost certainly would have. The supporting cast is uniformly excellent as well.

                

 I won’t go into the plot of Duplicity except to say that this is a movie for adults, and I mean that in the best possible way. Sure, there’s some light sexual content, but that’s beside the point. Duplicity is not dumbed-down to attract a wider, younger audience. This is a movie for grown-ups, and smart ones at that. It will probably suffer at the box office for that, but so be it. Discerning movie-goers get to have some fun sometimes, too.

                 
Duplicity is a gift for those who find most of what passes for comedy insulting. This is not only a movie to see, but one to buy when it comes out on DVD. I give Duplicity six smirking, devilishly-clever cows.