Will Neil Marshall ever get his mojo back? After finding early success with a run of lean, mean, low-budget face-melters — Dog Soldiers and The Descent are still near perfect genre films — Marshall has floundered in both larger-budgeted efforts (a woe begotten Hellboy reboot) and cheap, uninspired DTV efforts (The Reckoning, The Lair). His professional and romantic partnership with actress Charlotte Kirk has led to his worst films, and while it’s possible that a bevy of lawsuits and a sex scandal involving Kirk and powerful studio heads has precipitated a sort of soft-blacklisting, rumors and tabloid fodder are beyond the scope of a simple film review; we must deal only with the movie in front of us. In that sense, Duchess is hardly a return to form, although it is the best thing he’s made with Kirk — a low bar, to be sure, but credit where it’s due. The biggest problem with Duchess is that the tone and plot mechanics are almost entirely out of Marshall’s wheelhouse. It’s a complicated crime caper that seems to aspire to early Guy Ritchie, or early Tarantino clones, and neither the cast nor the writing has the timing or rhythm to make this sort of thing really snap.
Marshall and Kirk are credited as co-writers alongside Simon Farr, and their screenplay seems to confuse frantic forward movement for intensity and loud yelling for comedy. Deep breath — Kirk is Scarlett, a street smart pickpocket who lives with an abusive pimp-type and another girl. One evening, she tries to steal from Rob (Phillip Winchester), but he sniffs out her scam, and proves to be more than just a mark. He’s quick-witted and sees right through Scarlett’s tough girl facade. She’s instantly smitten. Rob has his own sideline in crime, and works with Danny (Sean Pertwee) and Baraka (Hoji Fortuna). Rob and Scarlett begin a tentative romance, and she is quickly accepted into the group. Meanwhile, the film introduces us to a dizzying array of inconsequential side characters, including Aunt Nellie (Judy Donovan), Scarlett’s brother Dave (Alex Morgan), and father Frank (Colm Meaney, who steals the whole movie with what amounts to a two-minute cameo). Eventually, Rob brings Scarlett in on his next big job, facilitating blood diamond sales to Ukranian gangster Charlie (Stephanie Beacham). The crew hooks up with Rob’s old pal Tom (Colin Egglesfield), who is working with dangerous gangster Santiago (Ivan Hermes). And this is only a smattering of the sheer avalanche of characters who flit in and out of the narrative, a whirlwind of tough guy posturing and accents, everyone looking to make a deal with one group while double-crossing another. It’s complicated, if not difficult to follow, and it all wears thin pretty quickly.
The film’s first half features a couple of fistfights and a shootout, all choreographed with little enthusiasm and filmed in a perfunctory manner. Occasional bursts of extreme gore are a reminder of Marshall’s roots in horror, and if a disgustingly visceral throat-slitting, some finger-chopping, and even a detailed Colombian necktie feel out of place in this sort of movie, it at least provides some brief respite from the clichéd banter. Curiously, the film switches gears in its second half, discarding the attempts at breezy banter and instead becoming a sort of revenge picture, as Scarlett (now dubbed Duchess) seeks vengeance on the double-crossing gangsters who have wronged her. Kirk, for her part, is actually pretty good in the role; keep her British accent makes her feel more natural on screen, even if much of her dialogue remains groan-inducing. But too much of Duchess feels stilted, like it’s a rough draft of itself. Reviewing The Lair last year, we said that it was “a dress rehearsal to work out the kinks, not a final product,” and that same impression once again flows forth from this latest effort. Whether it’s budgetary and/or time constraints, or simply a misunderstanding of Marshall and Kirk’s own strengths and weaknesses, their projects together come across as demo reels, or, even worse, vanity projects trying to sell Kirk to the public. This is by far her best role to date, and yet there are still a mind-numbing number of sequences seemingly designed solely to showcase her physique in slinky outfits. Several scenes even feature her simply running on a treadmill. At least the montages of her in a boxing ring pay off at the end when she fights the final boss. Too bad the fight, like much of the film, is haphazardly staged. Still, The Lair was better than The Reckoning, and Duchess is better still. Hopefully their next film will continue that upward trend. We’re rooting for you Neil.
DIRECTOR: Neil Marshall; CAST: Charlotte Kirk, Philip Winchester, Colm Meaney, Hoji Fortuna; DISTRIBUTOR: Saban Films; STREAMING: August 9; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 53 min.
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