Duplicity | |
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Theatrical release poster
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Directed by | Tony Gilroy |
Produced by |
Jennifer Fox Laura Bickford |
Written by | Tony Gilroy |
Starring |
Clive Owen Julia Roberts Tom Wilkinson Paul Giamatti |
Music by | James Newton Howard |
Cinematography | Robert Elswit |
Edited by | John Gilroy |
Production
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Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release date
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Running time
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125 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $60 million |
Box office | $78.1 million |
Duplicity is a 2009 romantic crime comedy film written and directed by Tony Gilroy, and starring Clive Owen and Julia Roberts. The plot follows two corporate spies with a romantic history who collaborate to carry out a complicated con. The film was released on March 20, 2009.
Five years ago. Ray Koval (Clive Owen), an MI6 agent, meets Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts), a CIA agent, at a party in Dubai. He is unaware of her identity and seduces her. Claire drugs him and steals classified documents from him.
Three years later in Rome. Ray and Claire meet for the first time since Dubai and spend several days together at a posh hotel. They imagine leaving their government jobs for work in an intensely competitive area in the private sector. They contemplate using their skills in intelligence to enrich themselves. After exploring possibilities over several months, including companies vying for the market in double-crust pizza, they settle on cosmetics and personal hygiene. How they will turn their positions to their advantage is unclear even to them, but they will be ready when the opportunity presents itself.
Claire accepts a job in counter-intelligence at Burkett & Randle. After more than a year, Ray takes a position in intelligence at Equikrom, where he will act as the handler and Claire as one of his agents.
Aware that Ray's new employer will be spying on him to assess his loyalty, he and Claire first practice how they will pretend to be meeting in New York for the first time since Dubai, reprising much of the dialog of their actual encounter in Rome. They are unaware that Claire's employers at Burkett & Randle are spying on her and hear this rehearsal, which blows her cover. Burkett & Randle CEO Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson) decides to keep Claire in her job, even though she is a mole, and to manipulate her in his rivalry with Equikrom.
Claire and Ray, working as mole and handler, reprise the dialog yet again and, as they anticipated, Ray's employer is listening in and is persuaded that Ray is loyal.