Rental Review - Duplicity

Duplicity has drawn a lot of comparisons to Mr. And Mrs. Smith, which does a great disservice to both films. Smith is the far superior film of the genre, and there is no way for Duplicity to reach its high level with this story, style, and quite frankly, the weaker acting.

Duplicity follows two spies, Ray Koval and Claire Stenwick (Clive Owen and Julia Roberts), who work for two different big name corporations. After first meeting five years prior to the present day, a meeting which did not end as Ray hoped, they are forced to work together when Ray is assigned to be her handler in bringing down Claire’s boss. However, in order for it to work they will have to trust each other, something not easy for people in their line of work.

The problem with this film is not in the premise itself, but rather, in how it is edited. The movie begins five years ago, skips to the present, and for the rest of the film the story jumps back and forth between past events and current actions. Though this is an interesting way of slowly releasing information to the audience, who can then slowly piece together the story, it is not as affective as one would hope. Instead, by the time the pieces start fitting together and making sense, most interest in what is happening is already lost to the frustration of not understanding what was going on before the slow divulgence of information.

Another problem with this editing choice is that the lack of information for the audience to work with for the first part of the film leaves them to only focus on the characters, most of which are more annoying than not, especially the title characters. They are constantly bickering, playing mind games with each other and working through their paranoia, failing to grasp the chemistry of Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s leads.

And finally, the visual editing style seemed overdone, alluding strongly to Ocean 11, 12 or 13 (they all kind of run together). It was quite standard for the body of the film, but during certain situations it was too flashy, trying to seduce the audience with slow motion and spilt screen images. Though I actually enjoyed the slower dance/battle depicting the childish rivalry between the two bosses, I could have done without the numerous images moving around the screen at once, especially because it wasn’t used to draw tension (instead of flashing between two shots, like when Claire is running around trying to find something as the man she is supposed to be watching slowly breaks his way out of his restraints, which is when the split screen could have been effective used), but was instead used to show Claire as she worked her way through Ray’s hotel room, as well as to transition between settings or times. It should have only remained in the end credits, where it belongs.

Though Duplicity actually has a promising story, it takes too long to get to the interesting parts of the story, and the cuing in of information is met with indifference on the audience’s part because of it.

Final Grade: C