Duplicity

I'm on the fence about the cheeky spy film Duplicity. It should have been a great movie with an all-star cast that included Clive Owen, Julia Roberts, Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti but something was lacking.

Owen played Ray Koval, a suave M16 agent, and Roberts was Claire Stenwick, a CIA agent. The two meet in Dubai and have a rendezvous. Koval ends up being duped by Stenwick after she drugs him and steals his top-secret info. When they meet two years later in Rome, they decide that they dig each other again and hole up in a five-star hotel for three days. Meanwhile, they cook up a plan to make the big bucks by working an inside job with a big corporation.

Giamatti and Wilkinson play CEOs for rival corporations. A particularly funny opening scene involves the two fighting with each other in slow-mo on a rainy airport tarmac. Their greed for power and recognition causes them to go to any extreme to find the next big thing.

Koval and Stenwick end up working for one of the companies to intercept this "big thing." It definitely does not go as smoothly as planned.

Owen was great in his role, and he's certainly not hard to look at. On the other hand, this wasn't Roberts' best acting by any stretch. The film was often funny, but I was confused by the jumping from different places and times. Plus, Koval and Stenwick as a couple were kind of annoying. Their constant distrust was a bore.