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Tony Gilroy
Duplicity
is a modest jigsaw puzzle of a spy thriller that simply shuffles the timeline
to make it a bit more interesting than the romantic comedy it would have been.
The film opens with a metaphorical scene in which two executives in suit
and tie, who just got off their respective private planes, fight a wrestling
match on the tarpan of the airport.
In Dubai a sexy Clare is approached by an aggressive and handsome Ray.
She lets him take her to his room but then drugs him and steals secret
documents.
Five years later they meet in New York. She pretends not to recognize him,
but he insists. Eventually she admits that she slept with him. They find out
that he is her field officer, which shocks her. She is clearly still a spy,
except that now she is into industrial espionage, and he is her contact.
The operation is run by a guy named Duke from the empty floor of a high-rise
building where he and his cohorts, including an older lady, have amassed
all sorts of high-tech equipment.
Their current customer is Dick, the CEO of a pharmaceutical company (one of
the two executives seen wrestling on the tarpan). Dick is
desperate to find out what groundbreaking product his rival CEO is about to
announce. Clare is Duke's spy embedded in the rival CEO's company.
A flashback shows how Clare and Ray met again, accidentally, in Rome two
years earlier. They uttered the exact same lines when they met in Rome (which
means that in New York they were acting them, only pretending not to have
met since Dubai). They fell in love, slept together and dreamed of making lots
of money so they could quit their jobs.
Back to the present, Ray, who has just been hired by Duke, impresses his
boss by seducing the woman in charge of travels at Clare's company.
They obtain a wealth of information thanks to that scoop. Clare is called by
her boss at the company to investigate the dangerous break in security and
listens disturbed to the lonely travel department lady explain how she fell
for Ray's lies.
Another flashback shows how Ray and Clare met in London six months after Rome
and made further plans to find a way to live together, exscept that they did
not trust each other.
Back to the present Duke's team finds out that the new mysterious product
has been acquired from the startup of a kid who now lives a wealthy life
in the Bahamas.
Another flashback shows Ray and Clare in Florida a few months earlier: Ray
has a new plan to make money by spying and cheating on a company that makes
frozen pizzas. She is unimpressed because she has just taken a job in New
York working for Duke. That's the assignment she currently has: spying
on behalf of Dick.
Back to the present Clare is interviewed by the rival CEO (the boss of her
boss) about protecting the top-secret invention.
A final flashback shows Ray and Clare meeting when Clare found out that Duke
needs to hire a field officer, and suggests that Ray applies for the job to
become what will be her contact with Duke.
Back to the present Ray arranges a secret meeting at a bowling place between
CEO Dick and spy Clare in which Clare tells them what the invention is:
a product to grow hair, the cure for baldness. Now they need the formula,
which is worth a fortune.
Clare is summoned urgently at the company: they found an employee who was
trying to steal the formula. Clare is left in charge of the traitor and of
the formula for a few minutes. She takes the formula and calls Ray.
They frantically find a way to send the formula to Duke's office.
Mission accomplished. Except that Clare turns on Ray: they find a copy of
the formula on him. However, it's only for show. While Duke delivers the
formula to Dick (presumably a false one), Ray and Clare sell the real
formula to some Swiss customers of theirs. Dick calls a press conference to
announce with grand fanfare that his company developed a cure for baldness.
He will be embarrassed soon when his people find out that it's a fluke.
Ray and Clare are not any luckier: their formula too turns out to be worth
nothing. Back in New York the rival CEO is celebrating a successful
counter-espionage operation led by the older woman who pretends to work for
Duke: she engineered the whole story. Ray and Clare did not know that they
were being spied all the time by the rival CEO's men.
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