Duplicity

Happy Easter/Passover to everyone! It's been a busy couple of weeks but I think things are getting back to normal. My parents came up for the Holidays and my Mom got to experience her first Seder meal. The dinner turned out great and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. But it ended up being a pretty dreary and windy weekend. So since we couldn't do much outdoors we decided to go see a movie. I really wanted to see Observe and Report and oddly my Dad was interested in seeing it too. But my Mom put the kabosh on that idea. She thought it was going to be vile and disgusting. Hell I wasn't going to argue I knew it absolutely was and honestly I wasn't too pumped to see that kind of movie with my parents anyway. So we ended up seeing Duplicity instead. It is well written and sharply paced and Tony Gilroy really brings a sense of fun to the movie. Clive Owen and Julia Roberts have great chemistry and it shows in this slick Ocean's 11 style heist movie.Roy Koval (Clive Owen) is a former MI-6 spy. Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts) is a former agent for the CIA. The story weaves from their past together as agents to their present as corporate spies working together to steal a new top secret product that could make them millions. The only problem is can they trust one another to get the job done? On one side you have corporate Mogul Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson) who is trying desperately to hold onto his secret formula. On the other you have CEO Richard Garsik (Paul Giamatti), a paranoid, and seedy exec who wants desperately to discover Tully's secret formula. Tully hires Claire to protect it and Garsik hires Roy to steal it. As you can tell there is a lot of backstabbing and moving and counter-moving. Some of the flashbacks make the story a little more confusing then it needs to be. But you do get a payoff for the flashbacks in the end.I'm always a sucker for a good heist movie like Ocean's 11 or the Sting. You have the Set-up and the Hook, which is the most fun, as you make your mark. In this case Claire and Roy seem to be deeply in love with one another yet their occupations make it difficult for them to truly trust one another. Although there were times with all of this scheming where I was thinking that Roy and Claire were not really that great at their jobs. Especially Roy who seems to really mess up a lot. Danny Ocean he aint. They certainly had the wit and ego for what they do but they both seemed bumbly throughout and maybe that's the point. I'm not entirely sure. But it was fun watching Giamatti squirm it reminded me a bit of his Pig Vomit role from the Howard Stern movie. It's a cute movie with great back and forth banter but that's pretty much about all you can say. It's not bad it's not great but it was enjoyable forgettable fluff.

Grade: 3 Buckets