You can agree or disagree when you see the whole movie.

That being said, I might be in the minority, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. You can't say this movie is intelligent because it tries to play completely the opposite route. The whole point was that they act all intelligent but they're really not. It counts on moronic acts disguised in thin smartness. Intelligence means something/someone is much smarter than your standard whatever. This movie can highly compare to the more intelligent members of the spy genre.

The film is mostly middling, going from boring to funny and then back again, often in the same scene, but Gilroy's final joke, the reveal, is a frisky, amusing one (although I doubt it holds up to close scrutiny). I also like the way that conclusion recontextualizes and makes a joke out of what I thought was the film's biggest weakness: the endless scenes of Owen and Roberts' can-we-trust-each-other lovers' spats.

Julia should only work with Robert Elswit from now on. I don't know what magic lighting he used, but she has never looked this good. And only two years after she resembled a dying Kabuki dancer in Charlie Wilson's War!

Um, I LOVED this. It's confidently tight and complex, perfectly paced, charming as hell, unpredictable... a great spy film.

And of course the movie has self-arrogance and thinks its outsmarting everyone, that's the point! What else can you expect with these main characters... Everyone in this movie thinks they're smarter and better than everyone else and easily able to deceive them, it only makes sense the film would follow suit. It's constantly playing the audience, acting two steps ahead of them... Again, the whole thing just oozes blissful confidence. From Gilroy, the tone, the actors, the plot.

About those actors, they're wonderful. I agree with yoshue about Julia, she's actually kind of... smoking here. Owen delivers as usual. Giamatti, everyone else, great work. They're all clearly playing characters... of course they are. Gilroy is very conscience of this being a spy film. The dialog is also sharp and slick, something a spy film can't do without

Great movie! Superior overall to Michael Clayton... maybe the year's best so far

4.5/5

Really? Both of my friends with whom I've watched this movie said she looked awful. I think she looks the same. Little older, but same...

As mentioned in my review earlier, I found Julia Roberts to look scary in Duplicity...



I preferred her classy Southern Belle from Charlie Wilson's War - - it suited her age and look much better imho...

She looks fine.
And this was a great movie.
Best of the year. So far.
Finally Owen gets himself in a movie I like. Been disappointed too long.
I watched International in the same day too.

Not really as smart as it wants to be, or thinks it is. Only the final twist doesn't disappoint. And the whole thing is flawed because it depends on the assertion that Julia Roberts is attractive, which is, we all know, demonstrably false.

I was kinda bored.

Duplicity

I reviewed this on BOM. I just spotted it online and watched it again. Great movie. It's the biggest bluff in Hollywood movie history, and it's executed perfectly with brilliant and crisp performances by Clive Owen and Julia Roberts. I rooted for Tom Wilkinson from the start and was glad he won. What makes this movie so great is that I had forgotten that I saw it so I wasn't exactly sure of the twist when I revisited it, so I was second-guessing all of the time. It's made in that low-key way to make you forget it so the next time you come across it it is special again. Or maybe it was simply because I saw it three years ago and just have a bad memory, heh.

Clive Owen is one cool customer, but for some reason I just forget all of his performances, and I've seen most of his films. I've pretty much forgotten why I loved Derailed, The International, Children of Men and this, and have had to rewatch them to excite my interest in him again. So, in the next few days I will rewatch Derailed.

A-

Derailed was a very bad movie.

Duplicity is very underrated though. I remember loving it when I saw it in theaters.