The stars are noticeably weak in this dull romantic thriller, writes MICHAEL DWYER

THREE WEEKS after the release of The International, Clive Owen gets a shave and a new raincoat and lightens up a little for another rambling, globetrotting yarn. In Duplicity, he plays former MI6 operative Ray, with Julia Roberts as ex-CIA agent Claire. Both draw on the skills of their previous occupations to engage in the much more lucrative business of industrial espionage.

Ray and Claire first meet in 2003, during a July 4th party at the US consulate in Dubai, after which Claire drugs Ray and steals documents from his hotel room. Five years elapse before he sees Claire again, spotting her at Grand Central station in New York. “You clearly have me confused with somebody else,” she says most unconvincingly, as if anyone could mistake Julia Roberts for another person.

The consequences involve the shenanigans of rival multinational pharmaceutical corporations and the secret formula for a highly profitable new patent. But while the themes of corporate theft, white-collar greed and people who bluff and lie for a living are timely, their dramatic potential is squandered in writer-director Tony Gilroy’s cluttered, convoluted and tiresome screenplay.

This is Gilroy's second outing as a director after Michael Clayton, a superior though overrated picture of corporate chicanery that suffered from being sidetracked on to superfluous tangents. Structured in flashbacks as it hops between glossily photographed international locations, Duplicity is densely plotted but not in any way that piques interest or even curiosity, and laden with reams of creaky dialogue that is often pretentious or implausible.

On their second movie together after Closer, Roberts and Owen crucially lack any palpable on-screen chemistry – there was more of a rapport between Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs. Cast as driven control freaks who are bitter corporate rivals, Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti invest their underwritten, stereotypical characters with more presence and conviction.

Duplicityaspires to the sophistication and style of a romantic caper picture such as The Thomas Crown Affair, but it falls far wide of the mark, and the snail- paced unravelling of the scenario gets more irritating as it proceeds in a movie that is, above all, boring, very boring.

Directed by Tony Gilroy. Starring Julia Roberts, Clive Owen, Tom Wilkinson, Paul Giamatti, Thomas McCarthy, Denis O'Hare 12A cert, gen release, 124 min *