Duplicity (2009)

In “Duplicity,” Clive Owen and Julia Roberts play operatives for, respectively, MI-6 and the CIA, who meet not-so-cute in the film’s opening, have sex, and years later end up involved on opposite sides of a multi-million dollar game of cat-and-mouse between two giant health care products companies. Or, so it all seems. Tony Gilroy’s film is a game a spry one-lines and one-uppers, quite the opposite from the burning-down-the-house drama “Michael Clayton” he made several years ago. The game here is on the varying characters and the audience. There’s a fractured time structure to this cute/funny film that’s not nearly as cute/funny as Gilroy thinks it is, and one never forgets that we’re watching actors play variations of countless past parts. The real fun must have been had off camera. Rome actually looks better here than it did in true life. B-