Battle of the sexes

Divorce attorney Miles Massey (George Clooney) is a star performer in the Los Angeles courts, winning his clients huge settlements - and himself a pretty penny into the bargain - with his theatrics and rhetoric.

However, he meets his match in wily gold-digger Marylin Rexroth (Catherine Zeta Jones), who plans to take her latest rich husband, Rex (Edward Herrmann), to the cleaners after catching him in flagrante with another woman.

This begins a sexually charged war of words and underhand deeds between Miles and Marylin, which is further complicated when the dapper lawyer begins to fall in love (or is it lust) with his scantily clad prey.

Intolerable Cruelty is the first film from siblings Ethan and Joel for which they didn't write the original screenplay.

The brothers' trademark quirky characters are noticeable by their absence; so too are the stable of regular actors like Frances McDormand, John Turturro and William H Macy.

However, the Coens still manage to inject irreverence into the central romance and the actors are gifted with some cracking put-downs and one-liners, which they throw at each other like verbal grenades.

Clooney is charm personified, playing a ladies' man who might just pass as a suave half-cousin of his hair-obsessed hick from O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Only this time, his smooth-talking lawyer is always getting his teeth cleaned and cannot pass a reflective surface without admiring his pearly whites.

Zeta Jones slinks sexily through every frame, plying her feminine wiles to lure each husband into her web, and she generates considerable sexual heat with her leading man.

The course of true love runs a little too smoothly towards the end of the picture, but screenwriters Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone still pull off some nice twists.

Every frame oozes style and director Joel orchestrates some wonderful set-pieces including a comic interlude with an asthmatic hit man that will leave you weeping with laughter.

Ruth Marsh