Duplicity

"Duplicity" (quality rating: 8 out of 10)

Director: Tony Gilroy

Screenplay: Tony Gilroy

Cast: Julia Roberts, Clive Owen, Tom Wilkinson, Paul Giamatti

Time: 2 hrs., 5 min.

Rating: PG-13 (vulgarity, some sexual content)

Smart. Very smart. Indeed, it is so sophisticated, loaded with mazes of mazes of plot turns and dazzling wit that, y' know, you may not even like it.
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I'll observe that if you truly comprehend and follow every scene, you're at major league level rocket scientist level. It is best, you realize after a bit, if you just let it all flow as long as you understand what the key characters' basic motivations are. "Who was that?" and "What's s/he mean by that?" are just too complex to deal with continuously.

To make matters even more challenging, time periods are mixed freely, although captions do advise you as to when you are where you are.

Roberts and Owen are absolutely electric together, drawing, repelling equal and opposite energies, radiating a crackling romance undertone. Their dialogue is so peppery and provocative that you're just handling one retort when two more overwhelm you. At the same time, the sizzling dynamic of corporate greed chillingly overruns the schemes.

For sure, forget your popcorn as your intellect will be demanded at max. Be ready to nudge your companion time and again with, "Are you getting this?" (Some indication of the twists, turns and density of plot may be indicated by the film having been written and directed by Tony Gilroy who did last year's "Michael Clayton").

For an opening, after two high-powered CEOs physically duke it out on the tarmac between their corporate jets, try a sexy bed-goaled confrontation in Dubai between Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts), formerly of the CIA, and Ray Koval (Clive Owen), formerly of Britain's MI6.
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Five years later, 2008, Ray runs across Claire again in Grand Central Station. She claims she doesn't remember him. That bit of gamesmanship, among countless others between them, is going to keep popping up time and again.

The question asked is -- where does love fit in on the list of priorities when this pair, each working for two competing multi-conglomerate corporations know that nothing, but nothing, must stop the acquisition of a secret formula that will bring untold riches to the winner? Seems that Claire and Ray have taken on the assignment from mighty moguls Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson) and a pirating CEO Dick Garsik (Paul Giamatti) who will accept no option of failure in the whole world in getting that formula. But, not surprisingly, Claire and Ray really have as their first motive the pilfering of the formula for themselves. Speaking in nothing but fluent duplicity and intrigue, every phrase of every word, phrase and sentence is a killer move on a chess board, especially with each and every individual on hair-trigger response mode.

Pursuing high stakes of outer orbit levels, with their diabolical CEO overseers operating at ruthless high-tech max with razor-sharp operatives, each is perfectly confident of success until . . . love. So how is their world of cross, double-cross and triple-cross will they make it? True, they're each profoundly dedicated loners. But love won't accept that background. And neither party to it will trust the other. They both know they're made for each other, but both know they can't reveal that or a lot of other things.
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Let the games begin, even as the corporate chiefs ride a whip hand with no mercy.

Here's your intelligent person's romance intrigue at stratospheric levels. Good luck.