‘Duplicity’ provides charisma and entertainment

“Duplicity” is delightfully deceitful.

Six hours in front of my laptop and that is the best I can do to summarize the film. But for your sake, I’ll try to elaborate.

If you’re like me, the phrases romantic comedy and Julia Roberts send you searching for cyanide. However, you can rest assured-“Duplicity” is not a romantic comedy. It is a con film. Thus, it is able to avoid all the horrible clichés that plague romantic comedies and inherits the clichés inherent in con films. Director Tony Gilroy throws so many twists at you that eventually, “Duplicity” becomes akin to a pretzel. Luckily, it remains as appetizing as a pretzel (this is a high praise coming from me, as I find pretzels delicious).

What keeps “Duplicity” entertaining? Clive Owen. It would be easy to imagine Gilroy – who previously directed Michael Clayton – casting George Clooney as Ray Koval, the ex-spy partner to Roberts’ Claire Stenwick. The combination of Clooney, Roberts and the chic style of “Duplicity” would have been a guaranteed box-office smash. The film also would have imploded with self-satisfaction.

So it’s on Owen’s shoulders that “Duplicity” rests. And he carries the film with style (literally, I would kill for his tailor). His delivery is crisp, his banter witty and apparently women are willing to lose cushy jobs with six-figure incomes just for one night with him.

Also, and I hate to write this, Owen has great chemistry with Roberts. They have a relationship built on the absence of trust and thus their conversations routinely involve attacks and counterattacks on the other’s credibility. In this way, “Duplicity” does a much better job of replicating a relationship than any romantic comedy.

The supporting cast is also strong, but how could it not be? The heads of the two corporations that Ray and Claire are trying to con (Did I mention the plot? Two ex-spies are trying to steal $40 million from two rival corporations. OK, done.) are played by Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti. Both capture what I would imagine the two archetypes of directors of the board to be: Wilkinson is the zen minimalist who spouts theories of corporate evolution replacing human evolution as he trims his bonsai trees and Giamatti seems to be perpetually seconds in front of cardiac arrest (he screams a lot).

Also, as a die-hard “The Wire” fan, I have to point out Tom McCarthy, who played Scott Templeton on “The Wire,” continues to exude slime in every roll he plays (that’s a good thing).

I’ll conclude by saying “Duplicity” is very aptly named. Everyone is deceitful in the film. There is no trust. As a member of the audience, you can’t even trust the film (it’s one of those films that doesn’t give you all the information until the last five minutes). But, “Duplicity” is delightfully deceitful-meaning it’s entertaining.