the audience applauded

Really Surprised!

The acting in this movie is really good.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Duplicity (2009) is a comedic/romantic espionage film. It stars Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, and features Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson in supporting roles. I had to watch this film twice in order to really understand it all because a lot goes on and at times it is a little hard to keep up. This is definitely not a film you can half pay attention to, if you do then you'll be like wait a minute, what the hell is going on?? Just go into this one knowing and expecting that. With that being said, there are so many things that Duplicity gets right. The casting is spot on for every character, I loved how they all portrayed their individual characters. The chemistry between Roberts and Owen is great, they have a relationship sometimes without complete trust, which is understandable given what they do for a living. This leads to numerous humorous exchanges between the two, and these exchanges are very well written, just like the entire film is. The writing is smart and it keeps you engaged. The ending is what I absolutely adore in this movie, I didn't see it coming at all and it is rather surprising. I highly recommend this entertaining, well put together film. 9/10.

If there is such a thing like a film to smart to enjoy 'Duplicity' written and directed by Tony Gilroy would certainly qualify. It is not that scriptwriter Gilroy misses smart stories in his CV - he wrote the 'Bourne' series (based on Robert Ludlum's novels), 'Proof of Life' and 'Devil's Advocate'each of them smart. The problem with Duplicity is that he did not find a better director than Tony Gilroy to direct a script which has many surprises, hidden angles, flashbacks and twists but too few of them are being turn into moments of good cinema suspense or emotions.Duplicity is the story of two ex-spies (one CIA - Julia Roberts, one MI-6 Clive Owen) who go private and plan a big scam by getting hired by two competing moguls in the shampoo industry. In a world where eavesdropping is the rule, where nobody trusts anybody, where every word hides a lie which hides an even bigger lie being a couple of spies and lovers means first of all trusting each other? Is trust possible? this is the permanent question and the answer is so many times no that when time comes to answer yes the answer is simply not credible.The two lead actors create chemistry and they cannot act bad, but chemistry and good acting is not enough, especially as both Roberts and Owen look or are made to look in this film a little bit beyond the peaks of their respective sex-appeals. This may be intentional, as even sexy spies start getting old at some point, and this is a credible situation of life, but simply does not fit the profile of an action movie. On the other side the twists and layers and flashbacks in time are so many and so often that at some point in time I lost interest in watching the action, and believe me, this seldom happens to me in an action movie. Duplicity simply tries to hard to be smart, and the style of director Gilroy does not make justice to the scriptwriter Gilroy.

This is a film that is desperately trying to sound clever. Unfortunately it expends so much effort on this, not well I might add, that it wastes a better than expected, if not stellar, turn from both leads.A theme throughout the film is that things a made more complicated than they need to be, both for the audience and characters. In fact this film identifies something, that in my mind, is more pernicious than a regular plot hole, a total lack of clarity in the motives of the characters. Some logistical oversight I can forgive, but if a filmmaker cannot reveal why a character is engaged in all these extra complicated plot points the film is lost.SPOILERS FROM HERE ONAs a counter example take memento by Christopher nolan. Very complex plot vs story film told through flashbacks, yet we understand why everyone does what they do: memory loss and deception. There is value in piecing it together to show how the story unfolds. Duplicity uses flashbacks, is not even as complex, but doesn't provide reasons for it. Both leads 'deceive' the intelligence teams through planned and scripted encounters, exotic rendezvous etc. but none of it is necessary and so doesn't make sense. This all plods on for a while making sense even if often unnecessary until at the end we are given a clanger, which I'm still surprised others don't note. It is revealed Tom wilkinsons character planned to find two fraudsters (Clive Owen and Julia Roberts, not just Paul giamatti) all along. I find myself screaming WHY?! He doesn't need to do this, doesn't know them, has a genuine goal of duping giamatti (which he does: this bit is fine) yet risks his entire plan by wasting time making things unnecessarily complicated. Before anyone says hes punishing them: no. He constructs the crime they commit before they know about it: essentially entrapment.. The real stinker is that to dupe the two he needs precisely the same resources (a mole in equistrom) to dupe giamatti so why does he deliberately seek out two (unknown to him fraudsters). Whilst not being a plot hole per se it makes no sense for him to do this: there is no motive at all. It is simply a cheap plot trick. You might as well take any film and change the ending by cutting to a character having masterminded every turn in the plot. It's not hard to do UNLESS you give them a believable motive throughout. This film does not have it and so it resorts to the intellectual equivalent of '...but it was all a dream'.Terrible.

Somewhere halfway in the movie I was thinking - Do I really care what happens? It may be a clever movie, but it does not feel personal, you don't feel for anybody in the movie. Luckily for me, I continued watching the movie. And by the end of this movie I was completely taken. It is only after the end that I realised we were completely manipulated to feel a bit impersonal early on, and then build the characters - who seem cold and distant - from there on. So full marks to the direction and the script. And to the lead pair too - they do not give you a hint. There are other things I liked in the movie too - the way it keeps playing with you again and again and again. Like that one key dialogue in the movie - repeated many times in the movie, but always with a different context, where some time you know nothing, sometime you know a little bit more than some characters, and in the end when you actually know almost everything. If you have seen the movie, you'd know which one, so I won't spoil it. Alright, there are some giveaways, where you know what you see is not what is happening - but then you still do not know the whole thing. All in all - its a very clever movie in that it sucks you in, and makes you keep thinking even after it ends. Great achievement by Tony Gilroy in the writing and direction. I am eagerly waiting for his next ..