DUPLICITY 2.0 Unfortunately, in trying to be an adult mystery/thriller, "Duplicity" ends up being too smart for its own good. A big part of the too smart result is the repeated use of flashbacks that create more confusion than they clear up while, at the same time, destroying whatever continuity the story has…it’s like one step up and two steps back. Time jumps around so erratically that most viewers will get lost along the way. And, after a while, "Duplicity" becomes annoying, even though it boasts splendid photography, scenic settings, and slick editing.

In the movie Julia Roberts is supposed to be a seasoned CIA agent, and Clive Owen is her cloak & dagger counterpart at British MI-6. The role fits Owen like a glove, but, conversely, Roberts looks like she ought to be selling Tupperware. The action opens five years in the past when Roberts and Owen meet for the first time at a 4th of July party in Dubai. Owen picks her up, but she outwits him and steals top-secret Egyptian air defense codes that he had stashed under his mattress. Actually she drugged him, and he thereafter bears a hugh grudge and terribly wants payback. He finally catches up with her five years later (or does he) in New York City's Grand Central Station. Since their initial encounter in Dubai, they have retired from international intrigue and have become agents in industrial intrigue.

"Duplicity" concerns the cutthroat competition between two multinational corporations each of which is determined to corner world markets. In fact, they worry more about what the other is doing than what they ought to be doing. Think of them as the fictional equivalents of Pepsi and Coke. The feuding CEOs are wonderfully played by Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson. The movie opens with a terrific sequence highlighting the bitterness of these two rivals…they are on the runway of an airport each with his on sleek corporate jet and lackey staff . They scream and yell at each other at first from a distance, then charge each other like mad bulls and end up tangling like inept wrestlers while their staffs watch in horror and disbelief. This scene was almost worth the price of admission

In the end, "Duplicity" is a harmless but unrewarding exercise in silliness…harmless in that it contains no sexually revealing scenes and none of the violence that it so prevalent these days….unrewarding in that it lacks the action and sensibility of other and better such films.

Clark