Hemsworth/Sheen on a mission to find Harrelson/Brando unaware of the atrocities he would encounter. Got that Apocalypse Now/Heart of Darkness vibe throughout this very good flick. Also, similar to Heart of Darkness, where elephants were being hunted, in The Duel ... well, see it for yourself.
So many a$$holes, so few bullets.
THE HORROR!
share90% of Apocalypse Now is the search... in this movie he literally rides straight into town. This movie was nothing like Apocalypse Now.
shareI'm going to have to agree with you. The comparisons to Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now! need to stop. There are two key elements to those works which are nowhere found in The Duel.
1) The journey in is one which gets progressively darker and more horrifying. There is no suspense without that journey, where our protagonist gets progressively introduced to the horrors. Because of that, we can get a sense that Mr./Capt. Kurtz also faced the same journey and that's how he ended up in power.
2) While both the Kurtz character and Abraham are the leaders of a society in the middle of nowhere, the key difference is that Kurtz became the leader of the native people by becoming more savage than them. Abraham, on the other hand, simply took "civilized" people, likely from Helena, and became their leader. If this movie were to follow the Kurtz example, Abraham would have joined the Indians or the Mexicans and became their leader.
To summarize, on two very critical plot elements, this movie is very different. I do not think the filmmakers were trying to relate to HoD/AN!.
I disagree.
1) the journey starts for David once he arrives in the village. Sure, it's not a journey in a sense of moving physically from A to B, but he is definitely progressively introduced to the horrors. It's not like he stumbles onto The Hunt in the first scene is it?
2) I 100% believe Abraham became more savage than those around him. He was peak savage. His way with words, his foretelling of the future, his propensity for violence for the sake of violence, his narcissism ("God maybe, but not me...")
Parallel stories don't need to be clones...
I actually think this film is really underrated. Its one massive mistake is its pacing, which has clearly lost most of its audience. I was sufficiently engrossed to watch it to the end though, and I would say I enjoyed it and was suitably provoked by it.
Recent favs: Sicario | Ex Machina | Enemy | Captain Fantastic | Hunt for the Wilderpeople
I totally thought 'Marlon Brando' within the first few minutes of this horribly horribly badly written movie! I'm a Harrelson fan (True Detectives HBO series, movies etc.) but I rented this movie for $1.62 at a Redbox and while watching it at home on my giant screen/Home theater system, I wanted to walk out of the theater several times and realized I couldn't lol. God, this was a bad movie and poorly written/concepted, I've seen better 50's B Westerns than this one.
You're damned if you do and damned if you don't ~ Bart Simpson