DUPLICITY – tony gilroy – 3.9 / 10

It’s pretty difficult to discuss Duplicity in any depth without getting into at least a few of the many reversals and double crosses that litter the film. So, fair warning, spoilers lie ahead.

Judging from his previous film (Michael Clayton) and this one, it’s clear that there are a couple things that Tony Gilroy really likes to put in his films. For instance, he obviously loves showing the audience a seemingly inconsequential moment and then later revealing that there was a lot more going on than it appeared (see: the GPS on the fritz in the beginning of Michael Clayton that, when revisited later, turns out to be due to a bomb that's been planted in the dashboard). And he loves the fake out (or reversal or double cross or, hell, all three at once) (see: the tape recorder reveal at the end of Michael Clayton). Both of these storytelling devices work relatively well provided they aren’t overused and don’t seem to be employed just to screw with the audience for no reason. The relative success of Michael Clayton is a testament to that.

Duplicity, on the other hand, reveals how annoying the fake out, the double cross and the-inconsequential-detail-that-turns-out-to-be-really-important can be when overused for no apparent reason. Is there some reason why, for instance, the chronology of the film is as jumbled as it is other than just to mess with the audience? If there is, I can’t see it. To me it seems like showing Claire (Julia Roberts, playing at being sexy and not quite getting there) and Ray (Clive Owen, a little overmatched by the tongue twisting dialogue) meeting in New York after supposedly not having seen each other in five years before revealing that they actually rehearsed this meeting a hundred times, is just screwing with the audience. I’ll admit that the initial New York scene is enjoyable but it sounds so rehearsed that when it’s revealed that the scene was actually scripted by the characters ahead of time, it comes as no real surprise. Plus, isn’t the point of rehearsing the thing supposed to be that they sound natural?

The film is really little more than an exercise in withholding information from the audience. Gilroy shows the viewer a scene without context that seems kind of cool. Then he shows another one. Then he reveals what was actually going on in that first scene while simultaneously showing something else that seems to make no sense. And then, just when the whole thing is getting pretty annoying, he reveals what’s really going on. Only to have that be revealed as a fake out a few minutes later. Sound like fun? To me it sounds like a filmmaker getting off on playing god with his audience, doling out just enough information to keep them interested but not so much that they ever know what’s really going on.

But the cumulative effect of all this is to make the audience completely distrust the filmmakers and the film itself. Thus when, at the end of the film, it’s revealed that what we’ve seen is not really what was happening, it comes as little surprise. Since Ray and Claire have spent the whole movie going on and on about how you can’t trust anybody, I can’t see how anyone in the audience isn’t anticipating most of the ‘surprise’ fake outs that end the film.

Actually, you know what? I don’t think many people would actually predict the final fake out wherein it’s revealed that Burkett and Randle, the company that Ray and Claire had been trying to steal from, had been playing them the whole time. I don’t know that anyone would see that coming because in a film as light as this there’s no way the audience expects Ray and Claire to lose. Imagine, for example, that Danny Ocean’s band of merry thieves hadn’t gotten away with the loot in Ocean’s 11. Kinda disappointing, right?

In fact, after the final double cross is revealed at the end of Duplicity I was fully expecting that this was just one more fake out and somehow Ray and Claire saw this coming and had something else up their sleeves. But no, they really do lose in the end. And while I’m not the kind of person who needs the ‘heroes’ of the film to win, in a movie like this, where the stakes are so low and the outcome so seemingly predetermined, this final reversal of expectation, rather than feeling revelatory, seems more like a fuck you to the audience. It's a final slap in the face from a filmmaker who’s been lording his ‘genius’ over the audience for the entire film.