Charlotte Kirk is a woman out for revenge in Neil Marshall’s ‘Duchess,’ a movie that can’t shoot straight.
By Jim Verniere/Boston Movie News
Fans of Neil Marshall first discovered the writer-director’s brand of “Splat Pack” genre-movie mayhem with his feature film debut “Dog Soldiers” (2002). The oddly named, relentless monster movie features a band of British soldiers stranded in the Scottish Highlands (home of Loch Ness), battling an army of werewolves. Boasting a cast of Brit film and TV stalwarts Sean Pertwee, Liam Cunnigham, Kevin McKidd, and Emma Cleasby, the low-budget, cult-fave entry spent most of its money on make-up effects and ammunition. Marshall followed that with the spelunking horror entry “The Descent” (2005), one of the scariest films of the past 20 years, especially if you’re claustrophobic. Since then, Marshall’s career has been hit-or-miss, including the underrated “Centurion” (2010), a historical action movie again shot in the Scottish Highlands, featuring Michael Fassbender, Dominic West, Olga Kurylenko and, again, Cunnigham. Marshall was nominated for an Emmy for a 2014 episode of “Game of Thrones.” He’s directed TV’s “Westworld” and was both executive producer and director of the visually impressive, marvelously cast, otherwise mediocre 2018 TV series “Lost in Space.”
Now, Marshall has made his third film with lead actor and co-writer Charlotte Kirk, following the 17th-century supernatural thriller “The Reckoning” (2020) and the Afghanistan-set monster movie “The Lair” (2022). “Duchess,” which Marshall co-wrote with Kirk (“The Lair”) and newcomer Simon Farr, is a throwback to such 1970s Blaxploitation classics as “Coffy” (1973), featuring the American screen icon Pam Grier as a Black woman seeking vengeance against evil men.
In “Duchess,” Kirk (“Ocean’s Eight”) plays the title role of Scarlett Monaghan, aka Duchess, a professional thief who falls in love with a diamond-smuggling gangster named Robert (the granite-chinned Philip Winchester), who is the first man in her life to make her feel loved and cherished.
After Robert is murdered by a combination of traitorous partners and rivals, Duchess goes on a bloody rampage. You know the drill, and nothing in “Duchess” is going to come as a surprise, except how much fun veteran Stephanie Beacham (“The Nightcomers,” 1971) has hamming it up as a feared woman gangster (ditto for Colm Meaney as Scarlett’s criminal, wife-abusing convict father and Pertwee of “Dog Soldiers” as Robert’s machine-pistol-toting, SAS veteran cohort).
Marshall makes excellent use of the film’s location shooting. But otherwise, “Duchess” shows its low-budget roots in cheap film noir lighting, tight interiors, phony fight scenes, and a plethora of— Can anybody aim?—shootouts. A prison scene features a single large room, a single prison guard, and low lights. The “tough-guy” narration courtesy of Kirk’s Duchess can be fun (ditto for such English slang as “You knob” and the old standby, “Blimey”). The violence is extreme. Meaney’s father asks Kirk’s daughter what she’s after, “Acceptance? Absolution? Closure?” Can I have a fourth?
In his Teneriffe vacation home, Robert keeps a tiger in a pit to help dispose of bodies, sometimes tipped in alive. Bouncer-sized Marshall makes one of his Hitchcock-style cameos as an incompetent hired killer. Beacham has a ball telling Duchess about her World War II Ukrainian sniper grandmother dubbed “Lady Death.” You root for Kirk in the lead role but wish she had more to give.
‘Duchess’
Rating: R for strong bloody violent content, pervasive language, some sexual content and brief drug use
Cast: Charlotte Kirk, Sean Pertwee, Colm Meaney, Stephanie Beacham, Philip Winchester
Director: Neil Marshall
Writers: Marshall, Kirk, Simon Farr
Running time: 113 minutes
Where to Watch: VOD
Grade: B-
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