Clooney character meets his match.

The irascible Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, responsible for Fargo and The Big Lebowski, put their distinctive spin on this thriller about an erotically charged battle of the sexes.

Miles Massey (George Clooney) is a star performer in the LA divorce courts, winning his clients huge settlements and himself a pretty penny with his theatrics and rhetoric.

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

Thus begins a sexually charged war of words and underhand deeds between Miles and Marylin, 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 the Coens for which they didn't write the original screenplay.

The brothers' trademark quirky characters are noticeable by their absence. So too are the 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 some cracking put-downs and one-liners.

Clooney is charm personified, playing a ladies' man who might just pass as a suave half-cousin of his hair-obsessed hick from Oh 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 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.