Try to sex that up.
Well, in Duplicity, writer-director Tony Gilroy - the man behind the just-about-brilliant Michael Clayton - tries mightily. Nudging a couple of Hollywood thoroughbreds out of the gate - Julia Roberts, onscreen for the first time since 2007's Charlie Wilson's War, and dapper, blue-eyed Brit Clive Owen - the filmmaker cues up a jaunty retro Mancini soundtrack and dispatches the duo to ritzy locales in Dubai, London, Miami, Rome and Zurich (and Cleveland).
Aiming for a romantic-caper vibe (The Thomas Crown Affair comes to mind, especially when Gilroy starts deploying those split screens), Duplicity zips from one elaborate piece of hugger-mugger to the next. But at a certain point (for me, it was Rome), boredom sets in. The moves are fancy - reversal, twist, reversal, twist - but what's the point?
Roberts is Claire Stenwick, formerly of the CIA and now on the payroll of Burkett & Randle, but - no real spoiler here - secretly working for its rival, the mighty Omnikrom. Her handler there is Ray Koval (Owen), late of Britain's MI6 and now running covert ops for a corporate boss.
Claire and Ray have a history going back to their days as government agents (Dubai, spiked bubbly, a missing file). The gimmick of Duplicity is that, despite their clear attraction, Claire and Ray are, by nature and training, wary. Instead of "I love you," it's "Are you gaming me? Are you playing me?"
If you've spent your professional life lying and deceiving, can it be possible to trust the person you love?
Interesting question, I guess. But when you wrap it in scenarios full of computer hacking, shareholder meetings, and who's-scamming-whom? subterfuge, the viewer - well, this viewer, anyway - begins not to care.
