Duplicity thrills

In theaters Friday: Capitalism: A Love Story, The Invention of Lying, A Serious Man, Whip It

New on DVD and Blu-ray: Away We Go, The Girlfriend Experience, Monsters and Aliens

The work of Tony Gilroy, maybe more than any writer-director today, feels like that of a modern film director. He is completely in and of the moment. His topical screenplays are smart and coolly honest. His direction is efficient and beautiful to look at because he hides the machinery of his cinematography like a magician. Everything looks effortless.

Gilroy did pen both Armageddon and The Devil’s Advocate, but even those were zeitgeist pictures in their own cheesy way, tapping into America’s pre-millennial, post-Monicagate anxieties. Now he has kept with the times by rejecting torture and law-bending espionage wankery in The Bourne Ultimatum, soulless corporate malfeasance in Michael Clayton, and both with Duplicity. In fact, Duplicity is not simply of the moment, but points to a future where the most epic battles and whiz-bang back-channel espionage will not be waged by opposing countries so much as competing companies. Those are multinationals, and these will be world wars.

The key to understanding and enjoying Duplicity is to look past the Ocean’s Eleven-esque posters with Clive Owen and Julia Roberts’ ultra-cool faces and think of the rival CEOs, played by Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson, as the stars of the film. Because this is a war, and these two are the generals. Both run massive Proctor & Gamble-type cosmetics and toiletry companies, and their volatile relationship is captured perfectly in the first scene when a dispute over whose private jet will receive runway access first gets hilariously physical.

Owen and Roberts play CIA and MI6 spies respectively who fall for each other and plan a massive con job so they can retire and travel the world together in style. Their opportunity knocks when Giamatti hires Roberts to his team of spies keeping tabs on Wilkinson’s company. When the team learns about an extremely lucrative roll out of a top secret, revolutionary new product, Roberts covertly brings Owen in to lead the group so they can exploit this information for millions. It’s Wilkinson vs. Giamatti, and Roberts and Owen vs. the rest of their spy team. Who will get the patent first and who will walk away filthy rich?

Owen and Roberts tap into the same off-kilter chemistry they played up in Mike Nichols’ Closer, as ex-spies who love each other but, always wary of the double-cross, question each other’s motives constantly and feel stuck with each other. Who else would ever understand a spy other than another spy? See Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Still, after so many plot twists and turns, the end of Duplicity feels a little flat, if for no other reason than the movie shifts more attention to the leads at the very point that it’s focus ought to be squarely on the CEOs.

In a recent interview while promoting The Informant! Matt Damon cited both State of Play and Duplicity—being Jason Bourne himself, he was obviously aware they are both Gilroy pictures—as box office failures that could usher in more mindless chum to the theaters because recession-weary studios don’t want to a take chances on “think pieces.” Duplicity made $40 million in the U.S., and State of Play slightly less. How much would Duplicity have made with Giamatti and Wilkinson’s mugs on the poster? Sure they played the title character and Benjamin Franklin respectively in HBO’s acclaimed series John Adams, but that doesn’t mean they would have gotten more people into the seats for Duplicity.

If anything, Duplicity calls for a sequel, or perhaps an HBO mini-series of its own so we can follow the ongoing wars between these blithely petty and overly ambitious megalomaniacs and the cunning jet-set pawns in their game.