By Way of Helena

Awfully boring. Also, pretentious and so terribly long... (18/03/2017)

A lot of western movies have emerged in America lately. They probably feel that it is time to go back to this genre, so they found a couple of screenwriters who embarked on the revival. From the beginning, The Duel allures you by the historical locations, just so it can then bore you to death with the plot of the movie, where nothing interesting happens at all. Woody Harrelson plays a very interesting character, but what’s the use of it when he plays it in a film that is shot in such an uninteresting way. He cannot save the film either and then all that is left for me is to leave it with the average three star, which is saved a bit at least by the ending. (25/03/2017)

The umpteenth variation of the same thing, a modernly conceived western that honours archetypal traditions, but at the same time tries to refresh the genre with a more modern script concept. That is to say, Woody Harrelson is not a classic redneck leader, but a head cleric who has everything in his district under control until the peculiar and soft-spoken ranger Liam Hemsworth arrives. The incomprehensibility and uselessness of the side characters may shatter the film a bit in its genre purity, but the final carnage, like in Bone Tomahawk or Salvation, saves it quite decently, although of course the clichés cannot be absent. (19/08/2016)

I found it almost unbelievable how much Woody Harrelson resembles Michael Berryman, and I don't mean that as an insult to either of them. What got me even more was the slow pace of this fantastic western, fantastic mainly because something relatively new is added to the classic theme of revenge/manhunt. It works and only confirms that the western genre has got the green light again after 2010. (06/11/2016)