A faux-elegant fable about how not to resolve your differences, made for dudes, by dudes, “The Duel” arrives at a time of intense division (and no small amount of scrutiny over gun use) in America. Releasing as a one-night-only screening via Iconic Events on July 31 before hitting streaming in August, the movie looks sharp enough, but lands like a rapier with a cork on it, as Dylan Sprouse and Callan McAuliffe play longtime besties who try to settle a dispute the old-timey way … by blowing each other away with pistols.
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“The Duel” feels like a pretty clever idea at first, to the extent I found myself wondering why nobody had thought of it before, only to wind up asking why its two writer-directors didn’t think of it more . As it happens, my library contains no fewer than four books called “The Duel,” the shortest of which (by Joseph Conrad) runs a slender 112 pages, but even that has more in the way of subplots and surrounding interest than co-directors Luke Spencer Roberts and Justin Matthews’ debut feature. While there’s just enough here to sustain a modestly amusing short film, the creative duo (who also penned the romantic comedy “Upgraded,” released earlier this year) really ought to have given the concept a bit more thought.
Their elegantly lensed but underwritten tale amounts to two guys deciding they want to duel and then methodically going through with the arrangement — which isn’t as easy as you’d think 220 years after Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton. We’re told by narrator Patrick Warburton, whose irony-filled baritone sounds like a namby-pamby Optimus Prime, that the trouble started when Colin (Sprouse) stole the woman Woody (McAuliffe) one day hoped to marry. In retaliation, Woody took Colin’s prized possession — a surfboard hand-carved by his late father — and torched it.
Rather than calling it even there (or trying to talk things over with his former friend), Woody seeks out an underground society to supply them with antique weapons and a suitable place to use them, until one of these guys is dead and the other vindicated. Had Woody actually made it to the altar with Abbie (Rachel Matthews, who barely registers as a character), Colin surely would have been his best man. Now the aggrieved ex-amigos must turn to their next-best-friends, Kevin (Hart Denton, dopey) and Sam (Denny Love, trying too hard), to serve as seconds in a no-less-formal affair.
This is how four clueless young men who look like characters from an “American Pie” sequel come to find themselves brawling outside what looks like a Prohibition-era speakeasy. The inconspicuous establishment turns out to be an elaborate dueling emporium, stocked with all manner of score-settling paraphernalia. None too pleased to see the guys fighting in such an ungentlemanly manner outside his shop, the all-too-proper proprietor, Christof (Warburton), appears at the door wearing a tweed vest, bow tie and flat cap.
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Preferring to cater to a much more refined clientele, Christof nearly calls off the duel. Now that certainly would have made for a short film. Instead, he runs them through the rules of such a challenge, from the slap in the face (with a glove) to the selection of an appropriate venue for the shootout. Plenty of Americans solve their problems with guns, though “The Duel” — or dueling in general — is meant to provide a more civilized alternative to drive-bys and the sort of indiscriminate killing that makes headlines. A nice touch in the movie’s scene-setting opening montage is the inclusion of signs for streets named for Americans who lived or died by the gun.
The obvious subtext of the film is that a lot of grief could be spared if these two fellows would be good sports and just agree to discuss their problems. Meanwhile, the guys accept the offer of Christof’s best customer, an avid collector named Rudolpho (Ronald Guttman), to do the deed on his estate. He even furnishes them with period costumes, as well as a few extra hours to cool their heads. Colin and Woody walk and talk and start to work things out, aided by a model-gorgeous hanger-on named Aphrodite (María Gabriela de Faría).
But this wouldn’t be “The Duel” if there was no duel, and though the directors (who bill themselves as “Luke & Justin”) have a point they want to make, it all feels rather anticlimactic anyway. That’s because neither Colin nor Woody ever become fully dimensional human beings, and what bursts of wit the screenplay does offer feel more like the filmmakers trying to channel Quentin Tarantino or Martin McDonagh than evidence that either of these dudes was worth sparing. Their reasons for dueling were never worthy enough in the first place for us to care which of them wins, which saps the sad-trombone ending of its tragedy. It’s not a good sign when the waste of a life starts to feel more like the waste of a bullet.
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