The Duel (2016)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

When Liam is in the Governor's office, the Governor uses the term "teenage", which did not come into use until around 1950. Woody looks about the same age in 1886 as he did in 1866. Alice Braga looks and sounds Brazilian, which she is, not MEXICAN. Production companies think we are stupid and ill-informed. It's the other way around. I said to myself about the buildings: they look like they're in a modern State Park, I was right. Check out the location details. Reminds me of filming locations supposing to be in New Mexico but abounding in Saguaro cacti, which are in Arizona, not New Mexico, like Gore Vidal's "Billy the Kid" (1989).

The presence of Harrelson and Hemsworth as well as the plot outline sounded promising. But Harrelson overacts every scene and uses the annoying stereotyped mush-mouth drawl that made "The Cowboy Way" so unwatchable. His "Abraham" is presented as a sort of cult leader who appears to have healing powers and can cure sickness with a single touch. Hemsworth is Texas Ranger "David" and has a wife who immediately falls sick in Abraham's town and Abraham begins to tend to her a little too much. David notes that there are no Mexicans in the border town only to find that Abraham hates them, captures them and sells them to hunters who delight in tracking and killing them. Which fails to explain why Abraham is infatuated with David's wife, who is Mexican. We also never learn why she is infatuated with the crazed Abraham. Nor is the issue of Abraham's faith healing ever revisited in the film. It's as if by the second half of the film the writer forgot he put that in the first half. Ultimately David is forced to be hunted but given a rifle and bullets to make it interesting for the hunters. His first move is to shoot the man guarding the next batch of captured Mexicans and free them. But it never occurs to the Ranger to take the gun and ammo of that guard so he eventually runs out of bullets. And after he resolves the situation, the wounded Ranger rides off into the sunset (instead of returning to Ranger HQ) leaving his confused wife behind in the town we are subsequently told was abandoned. The movie gives the impression the script was written in about 10 minutes and was never double checked for continuity or even common sense.

In the opening scene Abraham (Woody Harrelson) kills a man in a knife duel. The six year old son of the dead man becomes a Texas Ranger 22 years later in the post Civil War era. With Mexican bodies turning up in the river, David (Liam Hemsworth) goes to investigate and his wife (Alice Braga) insists on going with him. Abraham runs the town in a cult-like fashion wearing cult white when we first see him again.David is offered the job of sheriff, which he doesn't take lightly.The acting was good and the film had a few good scenes. You kept waiting for the inevitable conflict and revealing of identity which was slow in coming. David's wife was a confusing mess.Guide: F-word. Implied sex. No nudity.

This is the biggest let down of a Western film, it isn't even a Western movie, more of a philosophical boring movie with drama and politics. At best it could be considered a suspense movie with a weird plot that takes way too long, it is boring the entire movie. A Texas ranger is given the task of investigating murders of Mexican immigrants that happen near the Mexico border in a certain Texas town. His wife forces him to take her with him rather than be left home, and so he does because apparently a Texas ranger has to take his wife with him on every job in the 1800s. It gets much worse from there with nothing but a boring story without any western action whatsoever, nothing but continuous drama and only the slightest bit of suspense. The plot also depicts an psychotic evil man who apparently is some sort of "Christian" priest who ironically encourages people to brutally kill others as well as sleep with prostitutes. But the brave Hero is shown to be a good moral atheist. Lmao More politics in Movies. There was no need for anyone's religion to be depicted in this movie, just more political agendas and an incredibly boring plot. Please don't waste your money and more important don't waste your time on this awkward movie.