The Bottom Line

Duplicity

Written and Directed by: Tony Gilroy
Starring: Clive Owen, Julia Roberts, Tom Wilkinson, Paul Giamatti, Denis O'Hare
Rated: PG-13 for language and some sexual content.
Parental Notes: This is a fairly tame film with mild sexual content and nudity. Young children may find the intricate plot dull, but teens will probably enjoy it.

"Duplicity" is the second film Tony Gilroy has written and directed -- the other being the magnificent "Michael Clayton." But where "Michael Clayton" was a gripping thriller packed with deceitful, backstabbing bastards, "Duplicity" is a charming blend of romance, comedy, and intrigue -- packed with deceitful, backstabbing bastards. What makes the romance work is that both parties know perfectly well that the other person is utterly untrustworthy. They each know how the other's mind works -- and are attracted to each other anyway. Perhaps even as a result.

Ray Koval (Clive Owen) and Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts) met years ago when she worked for the CIA and he worked for MI-6. When they meet again, they're both working in corporate intelligence, each for a different company. The two companies involved are massive, and their CEOs, played by the wonderful Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson, are engaged in a personal feud. The two men are so determined to one-up each other that they each have intelligence divisions dedicated to spying on the other company, trying to guess each other's next moves and steal whatever information they can. Ray and Claire figure out a way to take advantage of the situation for their mutual benefit -- but of course, in a film like this, nothing is what it seems. The plot is deliciously intricate, and attempting to discuss it without giving away some of the joy of surprise is almost impossible.

So, let us instead consider the performances. Owen and Roberts have a thoroughly enjoyable chemistry together, and the well-crafted script gives them an excellent structure to work with. Everyone here is playing everyone else, one way or another, and both Owen and Roberts are able to be at once thoroughly conniving and thoroughly charming. Their romance works not in spite of their attempts to play each other, but because of it. They both know all the tricks of the spy trade, and so they can guess what the other is thinking -- they understand how being a spy changes the way you see the world, and that enables them to understand each other in ways nobody else can.

There are reflections here of various familiar tropes -- romantic comedies, heist films, spy movies -- but they are all handled with a light, deft touch reminiscent of "Ocean's 11" and blended together seamlessly There are the familiar jealousies and tests of a romantic comedy, but they're done through the lens of a spy picture. There are interrogations and codes and sneaky messages, but they're often run through a romantic comedy filter (watch for the scene in which Claire interrogates a woman Ray has seduced -- you can almost see the wheels turning behind her nearly-inscrutable expression).

"Duplicity" is a wonderful blend of genres, a spy thriller mixed with romantic comedy. It's not particularly edgy or brilliant, but if you enjoy double- and triple-crosses, atypical romance, and the kind of hilarity that comes from watching players get played, don't miss it.

Crossing Over

Directed by: Wayne Kramer
Starring: Harrison Ford, Ashley Judd, Ray Liota, Cliff Curtis, Summer Bishil, Alice Braga
Rated: R for pervasive language, some strong violence and sexuality/nudity.
Parental Notes: This is not a film for children -- the violence is sparse but graphic, and the underlying themes are aimed at adults.

"Crossing Over" is a powerful drama, provided you are willing to engage it on its own terms. The people in its interweaving stories make some bad decisions and it's easy to take a step back and mock them, but if you are willing to see their humanity and the rationales behind those poor decisions, their stories are touching.

The tales of "Crossing Over" feature people of every age, race, and country of origin. The tales intersect in unusual ways, looping over and around each other like the long, winding freeways of Los Angeles, where most of the action takes place. The unifying thread is the drive people feel to come to the United States, and their struggles to stay here. Many of the immigrant characters in the film are in Los Angeles illegally, but not all of them, and some of the citizens working in the immigration system are corrupt, but not all of them.

The big names in the film are Harrison Ford, Ashley Judd, and Ray Liotta. Ford plays an Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent named Max Brogan, a good man overworked and on the edge of burning out. He gets caught up in the case of a young woman deported to Mexico whose young son is left with nobody to look after him. Judd's character is Denise Frankel, an immigration lawyer whose clients include the family of a teenager whose essay on the 9/11 hijackers gets her arrested. Denise's husband is played by Liotta at his slimiest: Cole Frankel is one of the folks who approves or denies green card applications. When he meets a lovely young Australian actress desperate for a green card, he has no qualms about cutting a deal with her -- a deal that involves her meeting him in seedy hotel rooms whenever he wants for two months, in return for a green card.

Where "Crossing Over" falls short is in the simplicity of the characters. Of course, that is partly a function of its length -- to fully develop the eight or so individual stories would require far more than the 113 minutes of this feature film. It's hard to have much depth when you only get fifteen minutes or so of screen time.

But that simplicity allows these characters to be something more than just characters -- they are avatars for the hundreds, even thousands of people who have similar experiences every day. It's easy to dismiss those who come here illegally as criminals, job-thieves, or whatever the latest insult is, but the characters in "Crossing Over" have much more humanity than the statistics on the evening news. The tears the young woman sheds when she realizes that her essay means she may never see her family again are far more moving than a few dry sentences in an immigration article in the newspaper.

"Crossing Over" will not convince anyone to abandon strongly-held anti-immigration beliefs. It does, however, offer a sympathetic portrayal of the things people will do out of desperation. Sometimes those things work out, sometimes they don't. The film doesn't offer solutions, just an overview of some of the problems with our immigration system, and the way those problems impact the lives of ordinary people.

Watchmen

Directed by: Zack Snyder
Starring: Malin Akerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Patrick Wilson, Carla Gugino
Rated: R for strong graphic violence, sexuality, nudity and language.
Parental Notes: This is not a suitable movie for youngsters. This is a strong R rating and the plot is a very grim one.

If you're a diehard fan of the original "Watchmen" graphic novel, you've almost certainly seen the movie already. So this review isn't for you. This review is for folks who read the graphic novel once a few years ago, or who haven't read it at all, and are wondering what all the fuss is about and whether to see the film.

"Watchmen" is not your average superhero film. For one thing, it's based on the graphic novel which essentially started the American comic trend of the flawed superhero -- and that's flaws as in "failings" rather than flaws as in "vulnerable to Kryptonite." None of the characters are perfect, especially the heroes. For starters, the narrator is a bigoted and violent sociopath and the one hero with actual superpowers is so disconnected from humanity that he's not sure it's worth saving (after all, the particles in a body are the same regardless of whether it's alive, so what's the difference?). Some will complain that the flaws in the heroes of the film make them unsympathetic, but I would argue the opposite. These heroes may be deeply flawed, but they try to do the right thing anyway. They don't always succeed, but at least they try.

We learn as the film opens that folks started dressing up in response to gangs of criminals using goofy costumes to disguise themselves. But over time, the public got fed up with caped and masked heroes, and vigilante crime-fighting was outlawed. By the time the film starts, it's 1985, the Cold War is in full swing, and the group who used to fight crime together as The Watchmen are slowly softening in retirement.

Then one of The Watchmen, The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), is brutally murdered. The one hero still running around in a mask and costume in defiance of the law, Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), begins to investigate and becomes convinced that someone is killing off former heroes to pave the way for some diabolical scheme. Given that the United States and the USSR are locked in a nuclear standoff which has the Doomsday clock inching ever closer to midnight and world annihilation, his paranoia is understandable. He goes to see his old compatriots to warn them, and winds up drawing some of them out of retirement.

"Watchmen" is a rich and complex movie, full of big ideas and little throw-away gags (from "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky" being said during the moonwalk to a muzak version of "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" playing quietly in the background during an aggrandizing monologue), and the visuals are straight out of the comic book. This is a film that rewards multiple viewings -- provided you can get past the graphic violence, nudity, and sexual content.

The fight sequences let you see exactly what's going on, right down to the way skin splits when joints are bent the wrong way. Dr. Manhattan is so disconnected from human conventions that he generally doesn't bother to wear clothes (the matter-of-fact way those scenes are shot, without either coy attempts at blocking the view of his genetalia or lascivious lingering, is downright refreshing). The sex scenes are about as graphic as befits an R-rated movie, but after years of PG-13 superhero movies, they may be a bit unexpected. Caped and masked heroes do not guarantee a kid-safe movie, and "Watchmen" is definitely not one for the tykes.

Ultimately, whether you enjoy "Watchmen" or not will depend on what you're looking for. If you are interested in philosophical, grim films with deeply flawed heroes, it's well worth checking out. If you just want a big superhero movie, it is probably not for you.