If you’re going to make a movie with a plot so intricate and fiendishly conceived that it basically has to be spelled out for your audience in its conclusion, you’d better make sure the protagonists are ones worth tagging along for the ride.  Duplicity tries to be too smart for its own good as it unfolds a winding tale of deception and corporate espionage, but fails to lure the audience with characters engaging enough to sympathize in their elaborate predicaments. 

After a not-so-chance encounter in Dubai ends in deceit and regret, corporate spies Ray Koval (Clive Owen) and Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts) seem destined to have their paths cross – multiple times.  Working for opposing global marketing giants Equikrom and Burkett & Randle, Ray and Claire plot out a complex scheme to outsmart and outplay their employers amidst a desperate hunt for a revolutionary new mystery cream (or lotion).

From Dubai to Italy to London to Miami to Cleveland and then Zurich, Duplicity has its leads not only travel back and forth across the globe but also through the past and present.  Constant flashbacks to increasingly smaller segments of time count down like a bomb whose explosion leaves something to be desired.  With each previous encounter a little more is revealed about our protagonists’ master plan, but of course even when we think we finally know what’s going on there’s one more twist that changes our perception of everything we’ve just seen.  Similar to the cons in the Ocean’s movies, but with fewer characters and fewer thrills, Duplicity just tries too hard to be clever and the outcome feels far less refreshing and original than it could have been. 

While Clive Owen and Julia Roberts may not exhibit the most alluring of chemistry, perhaps the fault lies more with the deceptive and often hostile intricacies of their characters’ personality traits and their subsequently precarious relationship.  Due to the nature of their profession, trust is something always questioned and rarely given.  Even the occasional exchange of clever dialogue can’t brighten these dismal characters’ minimal charm or sort out a timeline so fragmented that it makes Memento look perfectly chronological.   

- The Massie Twins

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