Review

Review Date: 22-March-09
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Juicy

Duplicity (2009)

The crime caper Duplicity has one of the best title sequences ever. Cinema stalwarts Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson meet on a tarmac as business-suited CEOs and brawl like playground ruffians in super-slow motion. This burst of hilarity sets the tone for everything that follows. Duplicity is sexy as advertised, but it is chiefly a romp that makes fun of everyone, including entire corporations, who takes themselves too seriously.

Giamatti and Wilkinson play rival manufacturers of beauty products. Julia Roberts and Clive Owen play partner specimens of beauty. It is difficult to decide whether they are great for each other or just deserve each other, but the actors keep the charm coming as spies who ply their talents for personal gain. Retiring from government posts (she's CIA, he's MI6), they take jobs on Giamatti's intelligence force with Roberts planted as a mole in the enemy camp. Their assignment is to steal Wilkinson's top-secret new product, which they are only too happy to do with the intention of selling it overseas and pocketing the profits themselves.

Their professional mistrust combines with frequent nights spent apart to keep them at each other's throats, which creates repeated opportunities for making up. Sparks do fly, mostly in flashbacks detailing the origins of their relationship and scheme. Perhaps inspired by Roberts' élan, Owen achieves more character than usual by showing a cockiness overlying a dorky susceptibility. He too has the air of a schoolboy, which jibes with recurrent jokes about corporate espionage, i.e., how modern capitalists consider frozen pizza and body lotion as important as D-Day. This, for me, elevates Duplicity above other clever heist movies like Ocean's Eleven where the protagonists' greed is supposed to be embraced right along with their attractiveness. Here the lovers and their intended victims are lampooned for how far they will go for a buck. If we accept them, it is because they are clueless and vulnerable despite looking like movie stars and playing with stakes in the millions.

Copyright © 2009 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.