We had to crop this photo. We opted for chest hair.

This is obviously some Feminism 101 shit, but how come a lady-spy
always has to be boning everyone to get her job done? These days?
Still? I know man-spies engage in strategic bonery from time to
time, when they feel like it, when the “mark” is a magnificent babe in
a bear-fur bikini, but they also sometimes don’t. Lady-spies, no
such luck. Is there a “seductiveness” section on the CIA entrance exam?
What if a lady-spy is a lesbian? What if the dude she has to steal the
Egyptian air-traffic codes from isn’t Clive Owen? What if he is
Rush Limbaugh or the motherfuckin’ Eye of Sauron or, I don’t know, a
baby?!?! I’m just thinking that lady-spies need to unionize or
something. Maybe they can seduce a hot union organizer. Think about
it.

Duplicity—the new corporate-espionage comedy from
Michael Clayton writer/director Tony Gilroy—opens with a
lady-spy named Claire (Julia Roberts) meeting and seducing a man-spy
named Ray (Clive Owen), then, obviously, drugging him and
stealing all his important spy shit (documents!). Thankfully, the film
is smarter and more self-aware than this initial little puddle of
boilerplate suggests.

Over the next five years (Duplicity unfolds and refolds in
flashes back and forward), Claire and Ray strike up a romance, then a
scheme to bilk two pharmaceutical giants out of millions so they can
retire to a big, cozy, espionage-free love nest forever.
Duplicity becomes, equally, your traditional origami thriller of
double-, triple-, and quadrangular-crossing, and an exploration of the
emotional stress inherent in being one professional liar in love with
another professional liar. “Nobody trusts anybody,” says Ray. “We just
cop to it.”

With its repetitive structure and 125-minute running time, the movie
frequently drags—attempts to spice up its drab corporate stage
with flashbacks to Rome, Dubai, and Miami only almost succeed—and suffers from being stolen by its very own opening
credits. It’s an amazing sequence: Rival CEOs, played by giants of
character Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson (Giamatti’s character
describes Wilkinson’s as “a guy who bought a dump so he could go
through our garbage”), brawl in super-slow motion on a tarmac. Eyes
roll like rabid animals’, fist collides with pudge, and two of the
world’s most entertaining actors body-slam the pavement in palpable
fury. I could have gone home happy right then. recommended

Lindy West was born an unremarkable female baby in Seattle, Washington. The former Stranger writer covered movies, movie stars, exclamation points, lady stuff, large frightening fish, and much, much more....

22 replies on “On Screen”

  1. sounds like the film would have been better if it had just stared Giamatti and Wilkinson. Dispense with the boring pretty people.

    There really should be a sequence in the next bond film where 007 has to seduce Kathy Bates, just to balance things out.

  5. Another snooze-a-rama from that guy who inflicted MICHAEL CLAYTON upon us. Even my absolute devotion to the sublime Clive Owen and the sublimer Paul Giamatti won’t get me to sit through this.

  6. You all above in 1 to 5 would probobly love to be the inside character ON the Michael Clayton continuation epilouge IF,

    and mind you that’s a big if… you could have your life and SUE to win the next big Supreme Court Case for Internet Protocal Intellectual Property Rights face Morphing anti- Baby Raping Jail Gaurd abuse who fucked your mama in the head hard with a hammer from the government tool shed that was here before Betty Love was painted next to the Mormaon Church on I-5 only to find that your own slog was feeding the audio…

    …. the director of the slog was getting screwed by the upper management in financing and Ted Stevens Legislative group was paying the expense account for the next symposium on 22nd Century ardvarks soon to found un-frozen in a map of Turkey in a continental techtonic plate shift from Tunsunia.

    oh…. did I mention the fantasy part about online gamers funding resistanace to your bank machine withdrawl because you didn’t have sex with the bi-sexual lesbian spy who was here a couple of years ago in the spring yet is working on a new and more exciting film that wasn’t compromised by online snoopers and out of jurisdiction prosecutors looking to stop the legalization of Marijuana?

    Hey Lindy West…. One phrase….

    Camp X-Ray.

  8. Get over yourself, Ms. West, it’s not all about you! If you can’t review the film honestly and well, then bow out. You’re not half as funny as you seem to think you are.

  9. If you want an honest film review, read a different paper–because this here’s the Stranger, and I’m sick of people bitching about how it doesn’t live up to their personal standards. It’s THE STRANGER. It’s MEANT TO BE THIS WAY, that’s why it’s an alternative paper…and also, frankly, why it’s surviving better than the dry, tasteless, unfunny “journalism” some prefer.

    As for Lindy West not being as funny as she thinks she is? Actually Johno, she is. She’s fucking hilarious. Back off.

  10. “If you want an honest film review, read a different paper–” LOL, well I guess that says it all, although it didn’t used to be that way. As to “why it’s surviving better than the dry, tasteless, unfunny ‘journalism'”, so’s the National Enquirer and a far better “alternative” paper, The Village Voice. and finally, “She’s fucking hilarious.” lol…That’s the best you can come up with, about as “fucking hilarious” as your humorless response. I guess you’re two of a kind.

  11. Every time i read comments on this site it seems like a high percentage of people who read the stranger totally hate it. They know all the writers by name, but they sure have a lot of complaints.

  12. Yetis still aren’t funny.

    But this was a better effort, and West resisted what we were all thinking: Julia Roberts is haggard/rugged these days and yet her character has to seduce people — are spies all GILF obsessed?

    One assertion begs the question, Lindy: if lady spies are unfairly forced to fuck “all the time,” but men spies aren’t, then whom do you imagine the lady spies are fucking? You see what I’m asking? Simple logic, ma’am.

  13. @ Pepper: The Stranger survives because legit newspapers aren’t allowed to display ads for piss-drinking gay ex-boyscouts or 6′ 7″ ballbusting doms. It doesn’t get by on the quality of its writing (Jesus, could you imagine?) but by the same way every other hack alt-weekly in this country survives: by posting advertisements for sleazy, sleazy hookers.

  15. If Johno thinks this is isn’t a good review, he clearly hasn’t read a film review in the last 15 years.

    And if Johno thinks this makes The Stranger look bad, he clearly hasn’t read a Charles Mudede review.

  18. After seeing Duplicity, I can say that this review is spot-on. I got excited after the opening scene and then mentally snoozed through the next two hours. Pull your head out of your ass, johno.

  19. I have humor. I just save it for nice people.

    I find it ironic that you feel the need to tell other people to get over themselves. You may want to take a dose of your own judgmental medicine.

  21. Just want to let reviewer Lindy West know that I Googled her phrase “strategic bonery” in quotes and found only her review. Congratulations on your newly coined phrase. I’d say it’s a winner.

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