The Duel
Bloomington, Ind.-based Pigasus Pictures takes on the "Big Daddy" that is Hollywood in this tale of two "Friends" who can no longer live the "Suite Life."
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You know those memes that say men would rather do X, Y and Z as opposed to going to therapy? That’s essentially the gist of the Indianapolis-filmed dark dramedy “The Duel” (in theaters for a one-night engagement Wednesday, July 31).
Colin (Dylan Sprouse) has been sleeping with Abbie (Rachel Matthews) for the past three months despite the fact that she’s the girlfriend of his best friend Woody (Callan McAuliffe). When Woody finds out he torches a surfboard he helped construct with Colin’s dying Dad – a final gift from father to son. He also challenges Colin to a duel to the death.
A friendly foursome is broken into two twosomes – Sam (Denny Love) sides with Colin and Kevin (Hart Denton) with Woody. Sam and Kevin are to serve as each aggrieved man’s second – a trusted representative who seeks resolution without violence.
Woody reaches out to Christof (Patrick Warburton), an eccentric antique arms dealer, to get the tools of their tussle trade. A chance (and coked-up) meeting between Sam and Kevin with Joey (Christian McGaffney) in a restaurant’s bathroom puts the foursome in contact with Joey’s drug baron boss Rudolpho (Ronald Guttman). Rudolpho offers up the grounds of his palatial, Mexican estate as a field of honor for Colin and Woody’s duel much to the excitement of his kooky daughter Aphrodite (María Gabriela de Faría).
As written and directed by actors-turned-filmmakers Justin Matthews (grandson of Michael Landon) and Luke Spencer Roberts (he co-starred in the Coen brothers’ “Hail, Caesar!”), “The Duel” is a funny exploration of toxic masculinity.
It’s well-shot by “The Cable Guy” and “The Rules of Attraction” cinematographer Robert Brinkmann, handsomely designed by producer/production designer Gordon Strain and humorously edited by Joe Matthews and Matthew Willard (I cackled at a cut between guys peeing at urinals and a close-up of a hot dog’s tip on a gas station roller). It’s also uniformly well-acted with standouts both familiar (Warburton betters every scene he’s in and can kill merely through pronunciation) and unfamiliar (Love’s Sam is the funniest and most likable character in the film and the actor easily walks away with the proceedings). The biggest downfall of “The Duel” is that it overstays its welcome on a rather thin premise. It would’ve played better at an hour and a half and change as opposed to nearly two hours.
“The Duel” announces Matthews and Roberts as a formidable filmmaking duo and serves as a step forward for Bloomington, Ind.-based Pigasus Pictures. It’s well worth giving a shot or even two.