You’ll often find me railing against the Hollywood machine in these pages – the lifeless and cynical, the focus-grouped and beta-tested, the bandwagon jumping and the shark jumping – so it makes a pleasant change to loudly praise a film whose strengths are a pure expression of old-fashioned Hollywood virtues.
Duplicity is a star-driven caper movie, featuring terrific easy-going performances by Julia Roberts and Clive Owen – playing two former spies now in the corporate security business. They team up to play their two clients off against each other for a secret formula that will change the world, and discover that big business plays for keeps.