It looks like a movie-star vehicle: Julia Roberts and Clive Owen sharing flirty one-liners and hungry looks, all the while traipsing around various parts of the globe.
But don’t be mistaken. “Duplicity” is a writer’s movie. You are free to enjoy Roberts and Owen all you want, but the crisscrossing script of this film is the main draw.
The writer in question is Tony Gilroy, who also directed. He’s the guy behind the brainy suspense of “Michael Clayton,” and the new movie operates in a similar world of corporate skullduggery.
Plot description should be kept at a minimum, because figuring it all out is part of the experience. Roberts and Owen are spies at play in the corporate world, each working for a large pharmaceutical firm.
Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti play the rival CEOs of the two companies, and these two actors are as happy as pigs wallowing in slop.
It’s a love story, played against spy games — but with more heft than “Mr. &Mrs. Smith,” if that’s what you’re thinking. Gilroy’s script is constructed so that we’re never quite sure whether Roberts and Owen are on the level with each other, just as they can’t be entirely certain about each other.
For all the corporate intrigue, Gilroy is actually making a film about a couple — any couple — figuring out how to trust each other. These two just happen to be spies, which makes their skills at deception (and their tendencies to mistrust) a little more honed. Also more fun to watch.
Julia Roberts is a true-blue movie star, of course, even if her performances have rarely hit the kind of gravity carried around by someone like Kate Winslet. This is a good role for her because it taps into her teasing surface but forces her to keep something hidden — in fact, her character almost always seems more in control than Owen’s does. She’s a better spy, in other words.
Clive Owen, Roberts’ co-star from “Closer,” is tailor-made for this sort of thing, but he never plays the one-note super-suave spy. Even if the premise allows the two stars to glide through Rome, London, Miami, Dubai and other exotic ports of call — including Cleveland.
As in “Michael Clayton,” Gilroy has assembled a nice supporting cast, including lesser-known actors who really hit their marks. Denis O’Hare, Wayne Duvall and Oleg Stefan are terrific as corporate intelligence operatives (the latter an almost nonspeaking, but still mysterious, part), and Carrie Preston has a show-stopping 10-minute role as a willing victim of Owen’s seductive powers.
“Duplicity” is a real rarity: a star-driven multiplex picture that grown-ups can enjoy. And even though I have one or two questions about how it all worked out, few movies so far this year have been as thoroughly satisfying.
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