Duplicity - Review

DUPLICITY wants to be a master of the con by fooling the viewing audience and it does at times but I'm no body's fool. It wants to create some suspense but I knew that there is no grave concern for the "heroes" of this film. It's not because of the old Hollywood rule where the movie stars don't die in pictures. It is because the constant twists and mind-games are simply being built by the screenwriters to create more and more until a finale with an even bigger twist for the heroes to experience.

I'm not trying to be bitter over this film. It was an entertaining film with an almost balancing act of being an action caper and a romantic screwball comedy. The acting of Julia Roberts and Clive Owen should be given some thanks for it, but it relies more on James Newton Howard's music, which creates the vibrant tone when the script or the direction fails at it.

I still haven't seen Tony Gilroy's last film, MICHAEL CLAYTON, but from this example it seems that he has some problems with film structure. The film progress smoothly at first as we meet the complicated history of Roberts and Owen as they use their positions as corporate spies to locate and retrieve an hidden pet project of Burkett & Randle, a consumer product entity that has a nasty rivalry with Equikrom. The latter company's CEO (Paul Giamatti) wants the MacGuffin before a major meeting with the shareholders. This sequence of events is fine and dandy until more flashbacks are introduced. Other than giving way too many clues on what the two spies are planning on doing, they have these way too flash introductions with multiple frames moving around. These devices are pure television and should have been taken out. Also, a character is stuck in a jam right near the end, falling in the "Who's watching the watchmen?" scenario, where the spy crew question the trust of the individual. The film then jumps 12 hours in time and the character seemingly got out of it. No clue on how, just that the character made it out alive with no need to explain.

The final twist is a genuine surprise and the film is done with a lot of fun to be had, but it isn't a must or a great film. DUPLICITY doesn't deserve to be blacklisted but it shouldn't have to come out of the cold of 2009.

FINAL REVIEW: 3 / 5