Duchess
3 stars
I’m a big fan of Neil Marshall. He’s directed some of my favorite movies, from the epic werewolf war movie Dog Soldier to the nail-biting spelunking epic The Descent. Doomsday and Centurion are still my picks for the perfect double-feature, preferably at a drive-in. At the same time, I will defend to my last breath the Hellboy movie he made back in 2019 with David Harbour as the big red superhero with the mighty right hand. Haters be damned.
Marshall makes solid genre films that fans watch repeatedly and get excited about passing on to the uninitiated. Few things are as fun as playing The Descent for people with no idea what the movie is about. Bonus points if you expose it to them right before they go on a spelunking adventure.
So I was psyched to settle on the couch and watch his latest flick, Duchess. And I wasn’t disappointed.
The film stars Charlotte Kirk (Ocean’s Eight) as Scarlett Monaghan, a small-time London hustler who spends her nights in clubs picking the pockets of drunken men too interested in ogling her cleavage to know they’re being robbed. At the end of the night, she gives her money to her man and, if she’s lucky, gets to go to bed without being physically/mentally/emotionally abused too severely. One night, she picks the wrong pocket to pilfer and begins an adventure that takes her from penny-ante crimes in the nightclubs to the top of an international diamond smuggling ring.
Sure, the story is a bit far-fetched – more than a bit – but Duchess isn’t there for you to pick apart; it’s there to entertain, and it does so with style. Kirk is fantastic in the lead. Not only for the way she handles herself in the film’s many action scenes but for the believable tough-girl attitude she gives her character when she’s not kicking butt. She even lets her softer side show through, although rarely. Many action films with female protagonists feel phoned in like the filmmakers are too worried about how their star looks when throwing a punch than how the punch seems to the audience. That’s not the film that Kirk or Marshall made. You can tell they worked as hard to make Scarlett believable as a criminal as they and Kirk’s stunt double Adriana Benito did, making sure her fight scenes felt real. Duchess still suffers from that old action movie dilemma of guys with guns not being able to hit the person right in front of them, but the scenes where the bullets finally hit their mark are graphic and satisfying.
While Duchess is Kirk’s film, she gets practical support from the men in the movie. Hoji Fortuna (A Lisbon Affair) and Sean Pertwee (Gotham) find the perfect blend of funny and scary playing the muscle for the diamond smugglers. As the hunky head honcho Robert Mcnaughton, Phillip Winchester has the rugged good looks to play the head smuggler, but he falls short of being the leading man who will sweep Scarlett off her feet. And although not a ‘man,’ the fabulous Stephanie Beacham (Inseminoid) steals every scene she is in as Charlie, the ruthless head of the diamond cartel where Mcnaughton sells his product.
Duchess may not reach the same cinematic heights as some of Marshall’s other films, but it’s a solid outing from a man who knows something about creating exciting entertainment.
