Such a frustrating disappointment

Load of rubbish!!

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

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.

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.

This is dreadful. The worst fault, there is exactly zero chemistry between Julia Roberts and Clive Owen. Since the entire premise is based around their alleged sexual tension this is problem from which the story cannot recover. What you are left with is a by the numbers trudge through corporate espionage, in which a grim bunch of grey men in grey suits try to outwit each other over a shampoo. Wow. Sorry, but this was beyond ridiculous. Occasionally the story wandered into sci fi fantasy territory with scenes vaguely reminiscent of Aeon Flux. The leaping backwards and forwards in time did not do anything for the cohesion of the story. Julia Roberts is capable of far better.

It certainly looks very promising: A romantic spy thriller starring Clive Owen and Julia Roberts. What could there be not to like? Or so I thought. The movie, however, disappointed me all the way, or at least as far as I got. After 85 minutes I finally called it quits, as I couldn't face another 40 minutes of confusion, lack of plot and flashbacks by the bucket load. And the only regret I have is that I didn't stop sooner and used my time for something better. I found it hard to figure out what the storyline actually was, and the only conclusion I have come to is that there isn't one. I do like Clive Owen, and he's probably the only reason I watched thus far - him and the hope that it would actually get interesting at some point. OK, a few funny pieces of dialog along the way, but other than that, I could see nothing interesting about this movie, let alone thrilling.