Written by: Neil Marshall and Charlotte Kirk with additional dialogue by Simon Farr
Directed by: Neil Marshall
Peter O’Donnell set a high standard in flawed but impeccably cool heroines with Modesty Blaise. Modesty’s right-hand man referred to her as “Princess”; so, when director Neil Marshall and co-writer and star Charlotte Kirk need a title for their anti-heroine, they opt for Duchess.
Scarlett Monaghan (Charlotte Kirk) is an opportunistic thief, picking the pockets of drunks as they lurch around the dance floor. She catches the eye of upmarket diamond smuggler Philip Winchester (Robert McNaughton) and quickly becomes involved in his more glamorous style of criminality. But there is no honour among thieves and Philip is murdered and Scarlett left for dead. With the aid of her lover’s devoted partners Billy Baraka (Hoji Fortuna) and Danny Oswald (Sean Pertwee) Scarlett re-invents herself as Duchess and sets out for revenge.
Duchess falls neatly into two halves. The first hour is in the style of a 1960’s caper movie. Paul Lawler’s soundtrack has a smoky late-night relaxed jazz mood. The names of characters shoot across the screen in breathless captions. There is a split-screen sequence contrasting a chase across the rooftops with the glamorous lifestyle of the characters.
But the tone is uneven. Director Marshall moves from action-packed but antiseptic shoot-outs, where none of the principals get wounded despite bullets pouring down like rain, to close-ups of gruesome torture. Even in the latter the director seems unsure whether to be realistically cruel or stylishly cool. Before cutting up a traitorous underling Stephanie Beacham’s Charlie puts on chic scarlet overalls.
Tributes to influences are paid throughout the film. The opening sequence, setting the mood for style over substance, is like the cover of a garish pulp novel come to life- Charlotte Kirk in lingerie and a scarlet wig seducing with a view to murder. Colm Meaney has a Hannibal Lecter-like cameo offering Scarlett the chance to see her negative mirror image.
The characterisation is basic. The characters being hard-faced and profane but from deprived backgrounds. Philip Winchester presents as a criminal who cares – when his smuggling empire comes under attack, he makes sure his maid has funds- but to accept such a personality means the audience must overlook the harm caused to innocents by his profession. It is difficult to take Philip seriously when, like a James Bond villain, he has a tiger in his cellar. Despite Philip and Scarlett being madly in love there is little chemistry between Kirk and McNaughton.
At the mid-point Duchess becomes a revenge thriller but not in the classic sense of the revenger’s excessive actions bringing about their own downfall. Rather the mood is one of video-game hyper violence, lots of shooting but few consequences. The final twist is not so much as surprise as hardly credible – a lifesaving rescue that could have occurred earlier without needing The Duchess and her gang to be captured.
The closing sequence featuring The Duchess and her new gang makes one wonder if the film is intended as the first in a franchise. If so, greater care needs to be taken to make the central character an interesting person rather than just a relentless killing machine.
Duchess will be in Select UK Cinemas on 9th August & available on Digital Download from 12th August.