Duplicity

March 28 2009, 7:00pm

Rampant flashbacking/time-shifting only partially conceals the fact that at its core, this is a good old-fashioned male/female misdirection/heist/suspense romantic dramedy type thing. There are MacGuffins galore, plenty of quadruple-crossing, and not quite enough physical chemistry between Clive Owen and Julia Roberts. Which is actually part of the point of the whole exercise: they're so caught up in their spy-vs-spy mindgames that they can't commit to each other, and are constantly paranoid that the other is pulling a doublecross.

Which should make for some excellent opportunities for subtle acting via facial expression and tone of voice . . . and there are some, but not as many or to as much length as I would've wished for. One could argue that they're spies by profession, so they're well-trained at hiding or midirecting emotion, and we could then go round-and-round endlessly that way. Makes perfect sense, but in terms of the needs of the picture and its audience, I came away feeling like I hadn't gotten enough sense of them as people.

But then that may well reveal itself on repeat viewings, and I definitely enjoyed it enough to want to see it again (at some point, not tomorrow or anything).

Also worth mentioning: Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson are both awesome as rival CEOs of giant consumer-products corporations.