The plot engenders its suspense from following the off & on coupling of a super mole, Claire (Julia Roberts) and super spy, Ray (Clive Owen) - the former, working undercover for a consumer goods firm seeking the perfect money-making product; the latter, snooping for a competitive firm. They join forces, though they never trust one another. Director Gilroy plays with time and space, leaping back & forth, chasing the couple around the world - Rome, the Bahamas, Zurich, London, New York, Cleveland - with dizzying pace. They meet, they have sex, they exchange clipped, snappy repartee a la Noel Coward ("Well," "Well what," "You know what," "Oh?" "Of course," "I see," etc.), all the while keeping us spinning in an attempt to follow them. Gradually, in still more rapid cutting, the puzzle pieces come together and we are left with - what? Sound and fury, signifying very little.
Ah, but that sound and fury! Writer/director Tony Gilroy ("Michael Clayton") has concocted a 125-minute slick, well made serio/comedy that drips with pointless, intellectual nonsense - fun to watch, to puzzled out, to savor for style over content.

Against James Newton Howard's James-Bond-like music, with Gilroy's ability to set up his mise-en-scene as dramatically as possible (deep shadows, stark compositions one of which looks remarkably like a Magritte painting), tricky camera play (often as many as four scenes moving about in one frame, in & out) - operating like a magician in easy deception.

Roberts, aging beautifully, retains a Giaconda mask with a frozen smile, while Owens, in perpetual frown, clips things like, "I cawn't stop looking at you." Topping them is Paul Giamatti as a comic-but-shrewd-as-a-fox CEO - operating in a corporate death match, leering, grimacing, sucking in his lips, popping his eyes. He's wonderful to watch!

It's a satin & velvet performance, guided by a master of high class artifice, fun to watch while it happens, but fizzles in memory shortly thereafter.