A new movie from Neil Marshall is a reason to get excited.
The British director brought us 2005's The Descent (whose original ending is one of the most haunting in film history) and 2010's Centurion. Since then, he's directed episodes of HBO's Westworld and Game of Thrones, winning an Emmy in the process. Okay, so he did the ill-fated 2019 Hellboy reboot, but who can blame him for wanting to be a superhero cine-verse director? A guy's allowed a misfire. Besides, from the advanced materials, his new movie Duchess looked like it could be a return to form.
With Duchess, Mr. Marshall is less filmmaking than star-making. In it, Charlotte Kirk plays Scarlett, a small-time hustler with long legs, a cockney accent, and a scorpion tattoo on her spine. One evening, Rob (Philip Winchester) spots Scarlett on a nightclub dance floor, gyrating while picking pockets. He confronts her, takes her on, and brings her into his world. He's an international diamond smuggler, which means people want what he has and shoot at him to get it.
Scarlett discovers reserves of whatever-it-takes and becomes a player. Meanwhile, she falls for Rob. A sinister contact named Charlie (Stephanie Beachum) warns her not to go soft, that she has to be "three times a lady and ten times a bitch" to survive in the biz.
Sound familiar? My notes read: (1) provocative opening scene between man and hooker ends in (2) a freeze frame with a voiceover by hooker (who turns out to be Scarlett playing a role) which then (3) rewinds the action to weeks earlier. Characters are introduced in a freeze frame branded with their name. In other words: cliché, cliché, cliché. It's Guy Ritchie foo that has become a genre onto itself: the insouciant gangster laughing his—or her—way through gales of bullets, screeching tires, and flying fists, pausing only to wink at the audience.
This is Mr. Marshall's second film with Charlotte Kirk. She's more than a muse. She stars in and is credited with co-writing and producing Duchess, as well as in his The Reckoning (2020). In Duchess, she's fashioned as a female John Wick. The film is designed to expand into sequels. But this genre only looks carefree. It comes with certain criteria.
The genre requires novelty. Each entry must be bigger, louder, and have more of a body count than the one before. John Wick must break more bones in number 4 than he did in number 3. Duchess is off to a poor start. The fight scenes are graceless and blocked to mask a conspicuous lack of contact. It's often hard to tell who's fighting whom.
The genre requires a strong central figure. Think Liam Neeson, Daniel Craig, and Keanu. Think Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde. Or Scarlett Johansson in Lucy. Ms. Kirk, as attractive as she is, doesn't have their density on screen, which accounts, I suppose, for the cocky cockney voiceover to claim her creds and stitch scenes together. That toughness just doesn't come through.
The genre demands displays of copious wealth. With stakes this high, the rewards should be worn on one's sleeve, so to speak. James Bond would never be caught at a toney event without a tuxedo, and nothing is more visual than shooting up a casino. Yet Rob shows little fashion sense in his golf shirt and jeans. (That can be said of his "associates" as well, who come off as a bunch of J. Crew bros rather than dangerous criminals.) And, significant action is filmed in gravel pits.
As Rob, Philip Winchester (there's a name for an action star) has beefcake good looks and the easy manner of a high school quarterback. Of the other actors, Colm Meaney, a Guy Ritchie veteran who looks like a tough customer, is the most recognizable, and he's onscreen for only minutes. Hoji Fortuna, Sean Pertwee—Rob's requisite sidekicks, each with exactly one trademark martial skill—Boré Buika, and Colin Egglesfield round out the cast.
One can't really blame Neil Marshall for switching from auteur to entrepreneur. But Duchess falls short: its effects are cheesy, its action unoriginal.
More to the point is his conception: it's pretty half-hearted. This is the guy who ended one of the most innovative horror films of the '90s with a birthday cake. This is the guy who waged war on Westeros. Duchess shows little of that imagination. He shoots most of the action mid-range, as if on a body cam mounted on his chest, flattening the action. The denouement is logistically illogical and downright laughable. When Scarlett proclaims, "I'm Duchess!" she might as well be saying, "I'm a franchise!"
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Duchess. Directed by Neil Marshall. 2024. From Saban Films. On VOD and digital platforms. 113 minutes.