A CALL TO ACTION

It can be argued that Ms. Roberts is passed her prime as a romantic lead, that the "long-con" plot was too convoluted, or that the film's flashback-flashforward structure put too much strain on the average cerebellum. But a deeper examination of Gilroy's screenplay reveals an even more basic and fatal flaw: It had no moral component.

Since the dawn of humankind, stories have been used to teach lessons about how we're supposed to act, react and interact to achieve a stable society and personal happiness. Dramatic characters have served as role models - or cautionary examples - to either demonstrate successful modes of behavior or warn us away from truly painful life choices. In its most elemental form, a story is about a Good Guy and a Bad Guy duking it out, with Good Triumphant being the most popular outcome.

Without giving too much away, Duplicity is a twisted tale about shallow, venal individuals who try to lie, cheat and betray their way to riches, only to discover they've been played by people who are even better at lying, cheating and betrayal than they are. On one hand, you could argue that the treacherous Roberts and Owen characters end up with exactly what they deserve - until you realize that while their mendacity has borne them little fruit, it's done just fine for the character who is truly pulling the strings. So what is the movie trying to tell us? That it's okay to be an amoral, manipulative asshole as long as you're a really good amoral, manipulative asshole? That kind of thinking died along with Bear Sterns and credit default swaps.

Certainly, stories about con men - both successful and unsuccessful - have had a long and often successful history in Hollywood. From The Flim Flam Man (1967) to The Sting (1973) to The Grifters (1990) to Ocean's 11 (2001), films about elaborate deceptions and the people who perpetrate them have made for fascinating, entertaining and often enlightening viewing. But for these stories - in fact, for any story - to connect and matter to an audience, it needs a solid moral center. This can be expressed in several ways:

• Motive. Although everybody wants money - and lots of it - money alone can't be enough to motivate a dramatic protagonist. He/she needs a "higher" goal, be it love, justice or just simple revenge. For example, in The Sting, Robert Redford's character wants to rip-off gangster Robert Shaw because Shaw was responsible for his partner's murder. When the con was complete, Redford didn't even take his share of the loot. Having received justice was enough.
• Principle. In drama, it's important to distinguish between outlaws and criminals. Criminals tend to be amoral sociopaths who have little regard for anything besides their own self-interest. They break rules - and hurt people - because of an inflated and often twisted since of self-righteousness. Outlaws, on the other hand, are often principled individuals whose personal codes of conduct conflict with the stringent and frequently oppressive dictates of "The System" or ruling elite. Audiences may be fascinated by criminal characters like Scarface's Tony Montana or HBO's Tony Soprano, but tend not to embrace them emotionally. We may even yearn for their downfall. Outlaws, on the other hand, have a long and celebrated history as audience favorites. From Robin Hood to Zorro to Batman, we like rule-breakers who stand for something and who value honor and justice above mere personal gain.
• Hope. In those stories where the not-quite-smart-enough protagonists find that the tables have been turned, (e.g., The Grifters, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Matchstick Men, Duplicity), redemption is still often found in either a fundamental, positive change in the protagonist or in the form of an "innocent" who emerges from the story unscathed or even better off than he/she was before. Commercially, it's important that audiences be left feeling that there is still some good in the world, that evil does not permeate every aspect of society and that hope is not a four-letter word.
• A Call to Action. Explicit or implicit in every moral component is a "call to action," a plea to follow a better life path. Sometimes the call is in-your-face, as in the title of Spike Lee's 1989 Do the Right Thing, or implied, as in last year's Academy Award® winner Slumdog Millionaire. (The "call to action" of which is "Stay true to your love.") In one way or another, a dramatic story must demand that its audience do something or it's a waste of that audience's time and treasure.

As the failure of Duplicity demonstrates, skill, cleverness and wit-while sadly lacking in the majority of commercial screenplays-are by themselves insufficient to propel a movie to commercial success. To quote an old Broadway standard, "You Gotta Have Heart," and it should work in the service of leading the audience to, if not a better life, then at least a somewhat better way of dealing with the one they have.