Well, it feels good to hate again. After liking a bunch of recent albums, recent books, and even recent bookstores!, it’s a welcome relief to re-engage with my angry, judgmental side. While I certainly hate lots of things that don’t work me up into enough of a fury to write about them, it still feels nice to feel that pit-of-the-stomach burning of absolute loathing once in a while.The unsuspecting target of this new-found anger? “Duplicity,” a slick looking romantic thriller/caper(/comedy?) starring Julia Roberts and Clive Owen – written and directed by “Michael Clayton” auteur Tony Gilroy. I liked “Clayton” a lot, and although the Robert/Owen pairing stunk in “Closer,” I have nothing against either of them, in fact, I like them both!
Disappointment contributes to hate in an important way. I can't hate Lady Gaga because I couldn't care less about her. But “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” I can really hate, both because it was terrible and especially because I wanted to like the last book in a series I otherwise enjoyed. I can hate “Until I Find You” because I usually like John Irving and wanted to enjoy his recent novel the way I enjoyed, say, “A Prayer for Owen Meany.”
To a slightly lesser extent, the issue is the same with "Duplicity"; I like all the component parts (the supporting cast even includes one of my favorite filmmakers working today, Tom McCarthy, who did “The Station Agent” (excellent) and “The Visitor” (amazing)); the package
looks nice from the outside; it seems to be a thinking man's "fun" movie: original, smart, slick. So my disappointment-cum-rage rose all the more sharply when the truth was revealed: what a turd! What an absolute turd of a movie.I should give the standard “spoiler alert” now: if you're ever going to watch this flick, leave now. But the biggest spoiler of all has already come and gone: this is a lifeless turd of a movie that nobody should watch. But if that’s not going to dissuade you and my anger has somehow piqued your interest, forgo the rest of this rant. Thanks for stopping by, hope to see you again sometime. Because I’m about to ruin this entire movie, the final twist, everything.
Ready? Still with me? Ok. What is the hackiest, lamest twist ending in entertainment today? Say it with me in unison: “It was all a dream!” That’s correct. Now, while Julia R. and Clive O. aren’t literally dreaming throughout the flick, they might as well have been. They are, in fact, the unwitting pawns in a much larger game: duped marionettes, Tom Wilkinson’s corporate playthings. Nothing they do has any real consequences – they are completely, entirely being manipulated by powerful forces they don't recognize.
The stakes of the film -- stealing corporate secrets from competing pharma/hygiene companies (think Johnson & Johnson) -- are already way too low. Sure, there’s a lot of money at stake, but that’s it – it’s only greed that motivates the characters, with maybe an occasional dash of lust mixed into the greed-stew. I’m sure the parade of awful characters are meant to warn us all about corporate soullessness, about the dangers of avarice, etc etc. But what they end up doing is help us not care for a single second about anyone in the movie. I don’t care who wins and who loses because everybody’s an asshole. The lead actors have two modes: 1) cool and sexy, 2) angry and mistrustful. Switch from A to B and back again. Sometimes without justification, and sometimes they're only pretending. That's it. A, B. B, A. (ZZZzzzzz.) Nobody even comes close to seeming like an actual person. The discussions of "trust" and "understanding" -- i.e. "how can I trust you?" and "nobody understands me but you!" -- could have been lifted straight from an episode of Power Rangers.Gilroy drives the pitifully low stakes even further home with some vague jokes about the low-level nature of corporate espionage, as our "heros," a former MI-6 officer and a former CIA officer (guess who plays who), leave government service to greedily crow with excitement about stealing secrets for double-crust pizzas, or creams and lotions -- all for $$. The BIG SECRET the movie hinges on? A cure for baldness. Har har. It’s just too hilarious for words. And by "hilarious" I mean contemptuous and unfunny.
So already the stakes are way too low, and then in the end the rug is pulled out from under the whole movie. Basically, it's worse than a dream: our unsympathetic, uninteresting, inhuman protagonists are also easily manipulated losers! Ha HA! Suck on THAT! Our superspy protagonists are actually ineffectual idiots. I guess we're supposed to think the film itself is just so slick and sleek and sexy and surprising that we can enjoy the downfall of these greedy, thieving morons as some sort of morally justified comeuppance, but instead it just ends up being a bunch of losers losing. And sleeping together sometimes.
Oh, also, the movie messes with chronology! Can you believe it? Oooh, so impressive! So confusing! No, it's not like every other movie that self-consciously messes with chronology to inflate its own self-importance. Why would you think such a thing? The fractured chronological structure is actually like the heist in the film itself -- it takes you into their world of partial knowledge where form mirrors function so that what you see represents the way they---- BARF!!! Booooring!!! It's just flashy, unnecessary, show-offy filmmaking. (The kind of filmmaking that is the exact opposite of the simple, emotional, elegant storytelling that Tom McCarthy is doing, by the way.) Everybody is messing with chronology in films nowadays and nobody's impressed with that nonsense anymore unless it's really clever or great. (I'm more impressed with someone like...you guessed it...Tom McCarthy, who relies on really excellent writing to tell beautiful (linear!?) stories.)
I have some important nitpicks in the face of overweening anger, too. The biggest of these nitpicks is that again and again the movie closes a noose around our character(s), only to avoid explaining how they escape from that same noose. There are critical junctures of the move where scenes build to a breaking point and then simply cut to the situation having been mysteriously resolved instead of watching the break and the consequences. It's cheap. It feels like cheating. Well, let's just say it: it's cheating.
For example, Clive Owen gets arrested by menacing security guards for having all sorts of illegal accoutrement in a casino. Cut to: Clive Owen walking into work, seemingly unscathed. Clive Owen gets burned by Julia Roberts in front of everybody, completely caught red-handed. Cut to: Clive Owen sitting down with Julia Roberts at the airport to compare their (bogus) stolen goods. What the hell? How did he get out of there? How did he escape? How did he slip the noose, aside from Tony Gilroy choosing to cut away from the scene? Lazy, lazy, lazy. Cheating, cheating, cheating. Unsatisfying.
The whole movie is so pleased with itself, so smug yet bloodless, so boring and disappointing that there's no steak and the sizzle doesn't amount to much either. Don't let the A-list creative team involved here delude anyone into thinking the big "twist" is any better than "it was all a dream." Maybe it's got a different, "sexy" package and imprimatur, but it's the same stinky turd.
