A little bit of ‘Duplicity’: Clive Owen-Julia Roberts film keeps the viewer off-balance

"Michael Clayton" is a movie you can watch 20 times on cable and still spot an interesting nugget you missed during the first 19.

Its layers are a testament to the brilliant writing of Tony Gilroy (he also directed, which explains why so many of the words were preserved).

Gilroy comes from a family of screenwriters, and it's possible he's one of the few Hollywood hired hands who understands the history of the craft - certainly, as has been noted, he's one of the few who can approach the wit and style of the great Broadway-trained scribes of the industry's golden age.

There's some of that in "Duplicity," an all's-fair-in-love-and-espionage movie tailor-made for a pair of glamorous stars. Gilroy (he directs again) has recruited Clive Owen and Julia Roberts, and you can see the glow in their eyes. They could probably walk from Malibu to Marina Del Rey on the lousy scripts they read every day. Here, the writing makes the stars look good, the stars do the same for the writing.

When did Hollywood turn away from that happy marriage?

Owen and Roberts play British and CIA spies who take private-sector jobs with U.S. corporations that are locked in a heated battle to find (or steal) the next big consumer product.

The more we learn about this situation, the less we know. Owen and Roberts are former rivals and lovers, and we are never sure whether their romance or their rivalry is carrying the day. Neither, it seems, are they.

In addition, one or both may be a double agent, working independently for ruthless corporate CEOs (Paul Giamatti, Tom Wilkinson) eager to destroy and humiliate the competition.

Gilroy keeps the viewer off-balance (but never bewildered) with a time-fracturing narrative that conceals and reveals in equal measure.

The movie may be a little too long, a little too impressed with its own cleverness, but as flaws go these are minor, and a welcome variation on movies impressed with their own sadism.

Gilroy's most elaborate stunt has Owen and Roberts repeating the same sequence of lines at four separate narrative intervals, each time in a context that completely changes the meaning.

He makes it showy, and also surprisingly real. Gilroy is a tireless researcher, who spent months in law firm back offices to nail "Michael Clayton."

Remember, the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of that movie were a couple of corporate spooks protecting the interests of a creepy multinational by any means necessary. I'll bet Gilroy spent some time on their turf, too, and it shows.

Why then, does the sophisticated "Duplicity," with all its wit and groundedness, end with what feels like a whimper?

Conceptually, what Gilroy comes up with is a brilliant, risky, counterweight to big, caper-movie "reveals" (and slyly, the notion of Hollywood glamour he does so much to celebrate).

He pops that particular balloon, but what you feel in the end is the air going out. *

Produced by Jenn*fer Fox, Kerry Orent, Laura B*ckford, wr*tten and d*rected by Tony G*lroy, mus*c by James Newton Howard, d*str*buted by Un*versal P*ctures.