Ray Koval [Clive Owen] and Claire Stenwick [Julia Roberts] are former intelligence operatives who are now working for corporate businesses. They plan to take two rival corporations, owned by Howard Tully [Tom Wilkinson] and Richard Garsik [Paul Giamatti], for a ride and try to swindle some 40 million dollars out of the deal.

Seeing this movie I believe that Tony Gilroy, the writer and director, wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted this movie to be. It didn’t feel silly enough to be a proper slapstick movie and at the same time it didn’t give us enough explanation to allow for a truly interesting espionage film. I believe that deep down the movie wanted to be a CIA version of Ocean’s Eleven with the huge pay off at the end showing how who got played and how, which the film did but very unconvincingly. The ending felt like Gilroy was just scrambling for something that fit the puzzle in the most obscure way so that he knew no one would guess it 100%. One thing that annoyed me to no end is how it never made any sense for me to keep track of anything that was said or done. Anytime something was said deep down you knew it probably was a lie and whenever you thought that it was a lie it wasn’t, so at no time could you decide for sure at any time what was really happening and who was working for whom. Even the final twist ending felt like it was Gilroy just sending me a huge fuck you for trying to figure out the story before it were over.

One scene that I despised in this movie was the opening credits scene where you had this slow motion muted shouting match between Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti’s characters on a piece of tarmac. I believed that this was the best thing about the trailer, the short cuts of seeing the two characters shouting at each other and getting in each other’s faces, but the actual scene in the film was way too long. I started snoring after a minute of it and even though I think the idea was hilarious Mr. Gilroy needed to restrain himself from this kind of over-indulgence.

One of my other huge problems with the movie was the flashbacks. I found that it made the movie even more confusing even though I’m sure the point of them were to clarify tons of questions in the relationship between Ray and Claire. It did give me a good amount of back story to the crazy relationship between Ray and Claire, but in the end it felt almost unnecessary, I was more interested in the actual dealing of how they were going to take rival companies for a run rather than the love story of two agents.

One thing I can say that worked in the film was a few individual scenes which did it just perfectly to get the laugh that they wanted out of me. Two scenes in particular that I loved were: the scene with Julia Roberts and her panties accusations and the shareholders meeting with Paul Giamatti. The trailer gives away a huge bit of the panties accusation scene but I promise you there are still more gags to come out of that scene. Clive Owen owns that scene and I can’t believe how hilarious he can make it by just a sigh. Giamatti on the other hand plays an amazing role in being the speaker at his shareholders meeting and I’ve never seen a shareholders’ meeting like this. It felt more like an inspirational speech mixed with a comedy routine, and all the lights made me feel like I was watching the unveiling of the newest Apple product. Giamatti is one of my favourite character actors tight now, still not as great as Phillip Seymour Hoffman but still good, and I loved almost every minute of him on screen. The character felt like a mix of Steve Jobs and Hertz, from Shoot ‘Em Up, which was great to see.

In the movie featured a few really hilarious scenes but in the end was filled with tons of issues. I wouldn’t recommend this for a theatre ticket price, possibly a late night on HBO when you have nothing to do late in the night. There are better films that do what this movie tried to do, namely Spy Game and The Departed and any other film which deals with mole/handler relations and spy stuff.

IMDB says 6.7/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 67%

I say 4.5/10