After the Oscar-nominated success of his last production, The Six Triple Eight, one would’ve hoped that writer/director Tyler Perry would understand that any subject he tackles must be treated with an iota of respect, especially when based on real-life circumstances. For a while, his latest motion picture, Tyler Perry’s Duplicity, seems to root itself in a level of gritty realism that feels semi-respectful, as the community is shaken by the senseless killing of an innocent bystander named Rodney (Joshua Adeyeye) by a white police officer (Jimi Stanton) who suspected he was carrying a gun, while it was, in reality, a cellphone.
Rodney was the husband of Fela (Meagan Tandy), a highly respected news anchor, who now seeks justice for the cop responsible to be put behind bars. With the help of her best friend/attorney, Marley (Kat Graham), who also pursues the same objective, there is hope that justice will finally be served. However, a few months after their initial settlement with the city, new developments on Rodney’s murder repurposes the case in a whole new light and may prove that things aren’t entirely as they seem.
In typical Perry fashion, the film is chock-filled with one overtly melodramatic twist after the next. His writing isn’t entirely subtle, continuously spelling out the message he wants to convey in his 107-minute legal drama, either on systemic racism, racial profiling, police brutality, infidelity, or domestic abuse. All charged subjects need to be depicted with someone who understands how heavy these situations are in real life and can never be treated exploitatively. Perry has a lot on his mind, and, for the first time in a long time, seems to want to say something with the most benevolent of intentions, especially when drawing the corrupt partnership between police officers Caleb (Stanton) and Kevin (RonReaco Lee), who are hiding more information than we are led to believe.
At some point, we know more than the characters do, especially in regards to the police officers, causing us to think that Perry will take a stance on police corruption and racial profiling, only for him to entirely walk this commentary back by the time we get to a “four months later” twist that exposes the case with a perspective Marley initially missed. Instead of discussing issues that deeply touch African Americans with a level of compassion and understanding for real victims of police brutality, Perry can’t be bothered to keep his screenplay rooted in the reality that he bathes his movie in for a good chunk of the runtime, even if its frequent uses of soft lenses to express the weighted intensity of a story like this makes us believe the movie will stick in realism for all of its duration.
The minimalist use of music, only at pivotal dramatic points, to exacerbate a feeling of tangible heaviness, leads us to believe that this Tyler Perry movie will at least try to discuss real issues with no exaggeration, caricature, or emotional manipulation. Though the latter is sadly inevitable when watching a Perry film (he is, after all, a playwright first and foremost before having dipped his toes into filmmaking), the feeling that Duplicity will be one of his most grounded work is certainly present when the film’s multiple twists and turns lead the story to a telegraphed natural conclusion that, while not groundbreaking, wouldn’t have made this movie as insultingly bad as some of his previous melodramas.
A Last-Minute Twist Tarnishes The Entirety of Tyler Perry’s Duplicity
Of course, Perry’s dialogues are stilted, the actors overplay their characters and bathe them in egregious stereotypes, some of the telegraphed moments take a profoundly distasteful turn, but none of it is as bad as some of the filmmaker’s previous efforts. We go through the motions with the profoundly miscast actors but feel nothing tangible in return. It’s flimsy filmmaking, which is now what we expect from Tyler Perry. Perhaps it’s because I’ve seen many of his films that I’ve now realized that he can’t truly impress me and am numb by any of the dramatic turns I see coming a mile away, especially when one realizes where he drew inspirations from real-life events: Black Lives Matter protests during COVID and the murders of Rodney King and George Floyd by the police.
Making a movie with a strong statement on these events is well within Perry’s rights as a filmmaker to say something about the issues that touch him deeply. However, his refusal to actively take a stance, so much so that he recants the commentary he says on the police’s profiling of Black people, and how, no matter what, the establishment machine is too powerful that anyone who stands up to them won’t make a difference, profoundly affects how we perceive this movie. His intentions might have been well-positioned for some time, until a Giallo-esque red herring makes its final reveal during the movie’s tension-filled climax and derails any goodwill Perry had when he slowly introduced audiences to Duplicity’s central conflict.
There will be no spoilers here, but the movie’s haphazard reveal dials up the drama from 0 to 500 without any of the emotional texture and nuance Perry had clumsily set up in the movie’s first two halves. It ultimately left us with an increasingly sour taste in the mouth and even made me wonder if I had completely wasted my time watching this on Prime Video. I didn’t particularly enjoy Duplicity, but I never thought Perry would stoop himself so low to give us a twist that is not only disrespectful to the audience’s intelligence in wanting Marley’s case to reach its natural conclusion but also profoundly inconsiderate to the current events the movie is based on.
The movie’s perceived ending wouldn’t have been mind-blowing, but it would’ve given a satisfying end for audiences who might have enjoyed what Perry was offering. What comes after is nothing more than exploitative, button-pushing, and utterly unwarranted in how the drama was slowly building towards its ending. There was no reason for Duplicity to jump the shark the way it did and give us this cartoonish finale that’s simultaneously unsatisfying and tells us how ill-intentioned this entire movie is. As a result, while The Six Triple Eight will be remembered as one of Perry’s best-ever movies, his follow-up, Duplicity, will only prove his detractors wrong and may rank at the top of his worst-ever productions.
Tyler Perry's Duplicity is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.