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When it comes to spy thrillers, Tony Gilroy knows the game.
With Duplicity [Gilroy is] developing a nice body of work.
Gilroy keeps it all moving at a steady, stylish pace.
Duplicity is an enormously enjoyable hybrid, a romantic comedy set at the center of a caper movie.
It's a passably amusing brainteaser.
For all the glam and swank, the film is essentially a bright, shiny, empty puzzle. The puzzlemaking by writer-director Tony Gilroy is clever but most frequently an end in itself.
Julia Roberts and Clive Owen are reunited for the first time since Closer, and they're a messed up couple again. But this time they're secret agents, which is cooler.
Roberts and Owen work well as leads in a grown-up thriller, but these aren't their best performances.
When it comes to sorting out where we stand with someone, we're all spies. Tony Gilroy realizes that romance done right involves invigorating risk, and "Duplicity" offers a bracing, beguiling shell game of behavior to complement the light shenanigans.
It might be saying something that I preferred to see [Giamatti and Wilkinson] in action than the two actual leads of the film.
Duplicity features the sort of story screenwriters dream of crafting in order to show off their aptitude.
The results are mistimed and misshapen, like Lubitsch after a vasectomy
... a sleek, witty, sexy thriller with movie stars being movie stars: looking great, flaunting their charisma and playing roles within roles.
The film's greatest pleasure is in the snappy dialogue Gilroy crafts for the capable duo of Roberts and Owen... [Blu-ray]
Duplicity teams masters of mutual deceit in sizzling make up sex for spies, Julia squirming her way through one night stand pretend amnesia with toe rings, and a different kind of screwing of flabby corporate cutthroats in designer suits.
You gotta be flawless to tell a story out of sequence. This ain't no Memento. God, Julia is getting old.
It's not unfair to say that Duplicity is Michael Clayton on laughing gas. What's remarkable is that both movies pretty much work.
A stylish, engaging and complex thriller.
[Tony] Gilroy may have taken his time honing his voice as a filmmaker, but there's little doubt that he's got it down to a science at this point.
Duplicity is like sitting in a two-hour lecture from a college professor who reads straight from the text and never makes eye contact. Do you know there is an audience here?
This movie wasn't firing on all cylinders despite some of them being great cylinders.
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