‘The Duel’ Focuses On Slow Down Over Showdown

One of the most iconic figures of the western genre is Clint Eastwood’s the Man with No Name. If we were to list the various adjectives that describe the characteristics of Eastwood’s legendary gunslinger we would certainly make sure not to include talkative. The Man with No Name was a character that defined by his actions. Each bullet fired was a choice, sometime selfish and other times moralistic, but never with a lengthy speech to illustrate why he did what he did at any given time. There’s no character like that in The Duel, the new western from director Kieran Darcy-Smith. Instead we’re presented with a western where actions are seemingly irrelevant, only to be aided by a lengthy exchange of dialogue in what must be the wordiest western outside of the works of Quentin Tarantino. Lacking in Tarantino’s witty banter or ability to craft tension, The Duel is just a talky western that moves at a glacial pace and composed of inconsequential events.

20 years after his father was slain in a duel of knives, David Kingston (Liam Hemsworth) is a Texas Ranger trying to keep justice along the border of the United States and Mexico. He’s assigned to go to the mountains to keep an eye on Abraham (Woody Harrelson), a psychotic preacher and the man who killed his father all those years ago. However, David doesn’t view this as a mission to legally carry out vengeance for his fallen father. This is all about the law. Abraham is suspected in killing and/or kidnapping a number of Mexicans along the Rio Grande, including a few relatives of a prominent general. Fearing war, David’s superior (a woefully wasted William Sadler in two brief scenes) asks his young ranger to stop the evil deeds of Abraham. With a bit of prodding, David reluctantly agrees to allow his wife Marisol (Alice Braga) to accompany to the border town where Abraham has settled.

Upon arriving in the town, The Duel delves head-on into its resounding mediocrity with a series of interesting concepts that don’t have enough depth behind them to cohere into anything effective. Quickly, David enters the good graces of Abraham, who quickly appoints David as the town’s sheriff. Except the town folk don’t really acknowledge David’s authority because everything is truly controlled by Abraham. The villainous Abraham is viewed as a messianic figure in the town, and he preaches fiery sermons while he and his congregation grapple with poisonous snakes. Then there’s the other revelation about Abraham – he runs the town as a tourist destination for people who want to hunt and kill innocent Mexicans. They’re discordant revelations that never jibe together, and each alone could’ve made for an interesting enough story had it been in the hands of stronger storytellers.

There’s no greater travesty within The Duel than the fact that it’s incredibly boring. The screenplay by Matt Cook spends far too long in trying to set up a bunch of payoffs without any escalation of the narrative’s stakes. A majority of the film’s running time is dedicated to scenes of lengthy dialogue that lead into scenes of more lengthy dialogue, never building much upon the story’s most fascinating elements. Director Kieran Darcy-Smith is incapable of finding a rhythm to the written word, dragging out each scene far beyond the edge of reason. Even at the film’s conclusion, The Duel just won’t end as Darcy-Smith hedges his bets by giving the movie about 5 different ineffectual endings.

Think about it, a film starring Woody Harrelson as a psychotic snake-handling preacher shouldn’t be one of the dullest cinematic experiences of the year, but it is. And everything rests on Harrelson’s shoulders, as none of the other actors do anything to nullify the tedium on display. It practically seems as if Liam Hemsworth is charisma vacuum, draining the energy of anyone he shares the screen with as means to keep his leading man status just barely alive.

The Duel takes its cues from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness yet lacks the intellectual intrigue its dialogue-laden scenes require nor does it have the audacity to fully embrace the weirdness of the cult that surrounds Abraham. The result is a movie that operates with a thick skull and leaden pace. This is a movie that lacks in even the basest thrills; moments of violence are as boring as anything else in The Duel. At the end, you don’t care who pulls the trigger. All that matters is that they just get around to pulling the damn trigger. When the shots are fired and The Duel is over, there’s not so much an echo of a gunshot, just the echo of someone snoring in the back row.