Roberts is CIA officer Claire Stenwick and Owen MI5 agent Ray Koval who start out as rivals, then become lovers, before deciding to quit government service and put their intelligence skills into making their fortunes.

They hatch an elaborate scam to exploit the rivalry between two multinational soap corporations whose pursuit of the formula for the next revolutionary money-spinning product involves elaborate security, industrial espionage and dirty dealing.

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While Ray embeds himself in the team working for company chief Dick Garsik (a wild-eyed Paul Giamatti), Claire is across the street in the HQ of his adversary, Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson).

As events unfold in New York writer-director Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton) teases out details of what their game is through a series of flashbacks to encounters between the pair at locations around the world – Dubai, Rome, Bahamas, London, Florida, no expense spared – to keep us guessing. All the while the couple can never quite be sure of each other, but if not, there's no-one else they can trust.

Roberts manages to give glimpses of a real person beneath the façade of a character who is acting most of the time, and if that's less true of Owen you suspect there's less to Ray anyway. It's that sort of film, glossy and slick and with little substance, but it never pretends otherwise. There are twists and turns right to the end.

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