DUPLICITY must have looked great on paper. But given how it turned out on celluloid, I’m wondering if the script shouldn’t have been stamped: Burn after reading. It’s not that Tony Gilroy’s movie is so awful; it’s just that, on the face of it, it should have been so much better.

In DUPLICITY, Gilroy returns to the fertile fields of corporate corruption, fields that proved a winning combination for him in the critical hit MICHAEL CLAYTON. This time around, he goes for a more comic spin and ups the “witty banter” ante considerably. Casting two winning stars like Julia Roberts and Clive Owen as corporate spies who warily size each other up as prospective rivals and bed mates would seem a crowning touch. Part MR AND MRS SMITH, part PRIZZI’S HONOR, even part OCEAN’S ELEVEN, DUPLICITY would seem to have everything going for it. So why does it fall somewhat flat?

This may be heresy but I place the blame squarely on the shoulders of its two likable stars. And it’s not because Roberts and Owen are a mismatched couple. One might suspect that the clenched-jaw British actor and the wide-eyed American actress with the cinemascope smile would lack “chemistry” together. But if you’d seen them in CLOSER, you’d know sparks can really fly between the two of them. The key is both of them seemed totally committed to their characters in CLOSER. That’s not the case in DUPLICITY.

Interestingly, deception is central to both movies. But in Gilroy’s second, his actors seem to be only going through the motions. I’ll grant you that Owens and Roberts deliver their well-crafted lines with professional polish. The snappy dialogue allows the two spies to warily probe each other’s motivations and desires, as they both live in mortal fear of being duped by the other. At one point, Roberts cagily asks Owen if it would matter if she told him she loved him. He cagily asks her in return “Do you mean if you told me that or if I believed you.” That’s a nice sharp exchange. The problem is you don’t believe either of them – not so much because you mistrust the characters they’re playing as it is you mistrust the actors, who don’t seem to care one way or the other whether we believe them.

The two spies are constantly setting each other up, especially Roberts who finds more and more reasons to be suspicious of Owens’ fidelity. But by the third or fourth time Owen professes his “concern” that Roberts continues to mistrust him, the audience seems to have as little invested in the truth as Owens (the actor) appears to. The actors are reciting their lines well enough; it’s just that they’re not “acted” with any conviction.

I realize it’s a tricky proposition to present a couple of con artists who are in on a big con at the same time they’re trying to fend off being conned themselves. It’s necessary that the con men (and women) are fully aware of their own con and constantly on guard of others’ cons at the same time. But the secret to any good con game is the ability to sell the con and Roberts and Owen do so only half-heartedly. By the time the movie’s final con is played out, we’ve long ago checked out of the game and cashed in our chips.

DUPLICITY is all about faking out your opponent but in the end it fakes itself out.