Julia Roberts returns to the silver screen in ‘Duplicity’

Ten minutes into “Duplicity,” I was seized by the overwhelming urge to get up from my not-yet-warm seat and leave. Why hadn’t I chosen to review “Sunshine Cleaners,” the kooky indie film playing next door? Why on earth had I gone for Ms. Pretty Woman’s long-awaited return to the silver screen? Everything about “Duplicity” was glossy garbage, as I had expected — a cheap knock off “Ocean’s Eleven” if ever I saw one. Choppy dialogue, elevator-music soundtrack, silly boxed screens swooping from left to right, all screaming, “Look at me being a second-rate Steven Soderbergh!”

Yet, surprisingly enough, the film redeemed itself, unfolding countless layers of deception and counter-deception like a master poker player slowly revealing his winning cards. Though still very much a wannabe “Ocean’s Eleven,” “Duplicity” convinced me by the end that its two hours were not a complete waste of my time.

As trailers suggest, “Duplicity” is a slick, steamy romantic comedy-cum-crime caper. Julia Roberts and Clive Owen play two ex-spies who, after falling in love and having hot sex in hotel rooms from Dubai to Rome, decide to pull off a big heist so they can ride off into the sunset together. The scheme? To con two rival medical research corporations, one led by Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson) and the other by Dick Garsik (Paul Giamatti). The clever part? That for the vast majority of the movie, Owen and Roberts don’t trust each other, each unsure due to their espionage training whether they’re being conned.

Not too bad a premise, but writer-director Tony Gilroy, of “Michael Clayton” and Bourne trilogy fame, needs a lesson in writing convincing dialogue. The script tries much too hard to impress with its so-called wit, to the point that it inflicts grimaces instead of grins. Gilroy is clearly aiming for the kind of quick-witted, sarcastic exchanges that Aaron Sorkin wrote so well in “The West Wing” — you know, attractive people saying funny and clever things to each other at an unbelievably fast pace. But while Sorkin pulls it off convincingly, Gilroy flounders in clumsy cliche. You often feel like shouting at the screen, “No one in the real world talks like this!” Thank God, then, for Roberts and Owen, who have a hell of a lot more chemistry than anyone could have expected. In their hands, even Gilroy’s most awkward lines can sound like a come-on.

Still, though both performances are charismatic, the star power of the actors utterly obliterates their characters. I’ll confess that several hours after seeing the movie, I had to strain to remember the names of the two protagonists. Was Roberts’ character named Clam, Clarice, Claire, Chloe? Does it even matter? Basically, she is just Julia Roberts from start to finish, roaring back onto film screens with her trademark smile as gloriously wide as ever.

It’s not really the actors’ fault that their personas have such a steamroller effect on the film. Whenever stars like Roberts and Owen appear in a movie, you’re going to see them as actors, not characters. Unless the performers are throwing themselves wildly into the deep end, a la Sean Penn in “Milk,” it’s hard to divorce the face on the screen from the face you’ve seen a thousand times before in movies and magazines and on TV. Still, “Duplicity” makes remarkably little effort to move the actors out of their comfort zones. Roberts is still playing the same sexy-but-vulnerable character she’s been doing for 20 years, and Owen never strays far from his usual terse and monotonous style. Sometimes I wonder whether the man could ever raise his voice.

Ultimately, though, it’s not like we need to remember the characters. In fact, the immense star-wattage on display is a perfect fit for the film’s globetrotting plot and glossy, high-budget style. In the end, it seems, the film is more about seeing Roberts and Owen kissing in every city from Las Vegas to Zurich than it is about the deep, internal psychological conflict of the characters. And is that necessarily a problem? “Duplicity” is designed to be disposable fun, and on that front it delivers — as long as you can sit through the first 10 minutes, that is.

Pros Surprisingly strong chemistry between the two leads and a clever, intricate plot.