Is Tony Gilroy’s romantic thriller “Duplicity,” opening Friday, a remake of Stanley Donen’s legendary 1963 romantic thriller “Charade”? That’s the claim at the IMDB page for the latter film. Yes, Gilroy’s smart, sophisticated and utterly delightful “Duplicity” captures the spirit of Donen’s Hitchcock-style classic more successfully than countless attempts I can think of. But plotwise “Duplicity” is much closer to “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” — Doug Liman’s 2005 romantic comedy, not Alfred Hitchcock’s screwball comedy from 1941 — though without the violence and general air of stupidity that pervaded this hugely successful first effort by Brangelina. In her first bona fide movie star turn since she broke the $20 million barrier and won a Best Actress Oscar for “Erin Brockovich,” released this same weekend nine years ago, onetime queen of romantic comedy Julia Roberts, cast as a former CIA agent, is at the top of her game. She sets off sparks with Clive Owen, never better or sexier than as an estwhile MI-6 operative who Miss Julia alternately beds and bickers with. They’re moved over to corporate espionage on behalf of ruthless rivals played, respectively, by Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti.

I’ll have a review of this must-see on Friday, but I can say that “Michael Clayton” director Gilroy asks audiences to pay close attention as the twisty, double-cross-filled story, which unfolds in non-chronological order. “Duplicity,” like “Charade,” is released by Universal, which officially remade the latter as Jonathan Demme’s little-seen but not bad “The Truth About Charlie” (2002) with Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton. The IMDB also claims the hugely influential “Charade” was remade by Columbia as Lamont Johnson’s “Somebody Killed Her Husband” (1978) with Farrah Fawcett and Jeff Bridges though original “Charade” writer Peter Stone is no more credited there than he is on “Duplicity.” I’ve never seen “Somebody,” which is not available on DVD and was released decades ago on VHS.