Duel (Collector's Edition)
|
List Price: Our Price: $6.95 You Save: $8.03 (54%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $5.80 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Duel (Collector's Edition)
Movie Review: Lives up to the hype
Summary: 5 Stars
Steven Spielberg, more than any other director, has become synonymous with the big budget Hollywood summer blockbuster. His film "Jaws" in many ways started the trend, and just about every year or so Spielberg debuts another jaw dropper. Let's see, what films has the big kahuna made since "Jaws"? Hmmm, it looks like quite a few if his extensive filmography is any indication. After "Jaws" came "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," a smash hit that still holds up well today in the special effects department. I guess we'll skip over "1941" since it tanked at the box office. Then there is "Raiders of the Lost Ark," which needs no explanatory description. If you haven't seen this film, check your vital signs. Ahhh, "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," a film that's sure to bring a tear to your eye. I could go on and on, I guess, but the above description is enough to pad out my usual context setting paragraph. Spielberg is a big shot whose films always draw attention, even the bombs. But even Stevie had to start out somewhere, and that's where "Duel" comes in. I'm surprised it took this long for the film to reach DVD.
Just as "Jaws" set the standard for every animal run amok film made since then, "Duel" did the same thing for killer car movies. Yes, there is a killer car genre, although it's much smaller than the animals run amok genre. Anyway, "Duel" stars veteran actor Dennis Weaver as a sort of average, everyday buttoned down business type who runs into far more than he bargained for during a trip across a deserted stretch of country. At some point in his travels, he angers the driver of an ancient, dirt encrusted semi-truck. Mann--that's Weaver's character--sort of shrugs the belligerent driver off at first and continues on his way. Most of us would do the same thing on a long trip, preferring to pay more attention to the radio and the road than waste time wondering what a touchy truck driver is doing. Heck, most people get mad on the road and then let it pass. At least they did back in the 1970s before road rage reared its ugly head. Problem is, Mann unfortunately angered a total sociopath, and a sociopath tends to NOT let things that irritate them pass by without a response. In no time at all this guy is following Mann, roaring up behind him, trying to run him off the road, and generally making quite a nuisance of himself. When truck drivers want to pose a menace to their fellow citizens on the highway, they can certainly do a good job of it.
Events escalate from nuisance to worry to downright fear as the trucker makes it quite clear he won't be happy until Mann dies horribly. He gets Mann so jittery that our hero makes a total fool out of himself at a diner when he thinks a poor guy eating a sandwich is the villain. Oops. Then there is the situation in which a desperate Mann trying to use a pay phone has to dive out of the way as the truck flattens the booth. What in the heck is it going to take to put an end to the madness? Well, Mann is going to have to stand up and be, pardon the pun, a man. He's going to have to swallow his civilization-induced cowardice and put this guy down for the count. It's sort of hard to imagine how Mann can do anything about his situation, however. He doesn't have a cell phone since it's the 1970s, he drives a dinky red car that couldn't run a bicycle off the road, and he's stuck out in the middle of what must be one of the most desolate regions in the nation. There aren't even that many other cars on the road to seek help from, and the few that do pass by make it a point to stay away from any potential problems. It turns out that a bait and switch routine might do the trick, but it all comes down to the wire as the milquetoast makes his final stand. Who will win? If you've seen any of Spielberg's films, the answer shouldn't elude you for long.
"Duel," considering it's a made-for-television movie, succeeds for a number of reasons. The biggest thing going for the film is that it's based on a Richard Matheson story with a screenplay written by Richard Matheson. He's an old hand at suspense and horror stories, so Spielberg started out with great material before shooting a single frame. The acting chops of Dennis Weaver give the story a lot of oomph as well. No one plays sweat soaked nervous like Weaver (see him in "Touch of Evil"), and "Duel" is another example of this actor carrying panic to the nth degree. Spielberg says in an interview included on the disc that he jumped at the chance to cast Weaver in the film because he wanted a character who would properly convey a sense of overwhelming panic. A final reason the film works is Spielberg's direction. The same interview on the disc serves as a sort of miniature commentary track in which Spielberg relates a lot of the camera tricks he used to give the film a sense of frenzied pace. One interesting factoid concerns the sound effect he used in the film's denouement, an effect he used again in "Jaws."
Extras on the disc include the thirty-five minute interview with Spielberg (he refuses to do traditional DVD commentaries), an interview with Richard Matheson discussing how the genesis of "Duel" came about, an intriguing documentary about Spielberg's early career directing television shows (he worked with Joan Crawford at one point), a photograph and poster gallery, a trailer, and cast and crew biographies and filmographies. If you haven't seen this one yet, now is the time to do so.
Movie Review: Less is more - let's have more like this please Steven!
Summary: 5 Stars
So here's an irony: Thirty-five years on, the movie audience which Spielberg's later work helped to capture - multiplex consumers of overblown CGI, gross-out, slapstick, and ever-greater explosions - may not "get" this one at all (e.g. see some of its other reviewers here). For anybody else - and this is most certainly not "art-house" either, don't be put off - here's an astounding, must-see thriller. OK, so it's a wannabe western, or Hitchcock (or Beowulf, or Alien, or High Noon) on wheels: None of that detracts from its great premise, which is delivered utterly without frills.
So many reasons to see this:
Spielberg is SO good at doing minimal (seriously, Steve, about time to get back to some of that?): Pared-down music, only natural-sound detail; no human baddie, just a perfectly cast truck as the anthropomorphised "killer". Even the shattering finale is captured on ordinary live film, albeit in one of the most awe-inspiring shots ever taken.
Great raw material: OK, so of course the script dates just a bit, with what dialogue there is sounding TV-ish and a wee bit cheesy to the modern ear; and kids now seeing this film might snigger at the personal styling details and plot's obvious reliance on predating mobile phones; but hey... We're right there for Mann (Dennis Weaver) from the very start, as it's vital that we have to be, because his story is so discreetly and elegantly constructed.
And as a piece of performance: Not just by Weaver, who's entirely credible as the put-upon everyman reluctantly forced to find his inner warrior. The film works because it sustains a gut-wrenching kinetic energy that few others ever reach (woeful comparison with, for example, the new Pirates III, which for all its frantic rushing about, quite fails to draw its audience into the action). DUEL is all the more impressive because the whole movie is shot "for real" - perhaps partly because the frantic pace of its actual production (see below) seems to rub off onto the screen. That it works at all is largely because it's propelled by uncannily perfect pacing of the long road sequences, which (as Spielberg acknowledges) only happens when you perfectly combine the ingredients: obsessive planning of sequences; unobtrusively brilliant stunt driving; then-new moving camera techniques (including a contribution from Bullitt's road unit); and laser-sharp editing. That's not to overlook the out-of-car scenes, which have a gloriously welcome fingernails-down-the-blackboard inner screech of Hitchcockian suspense - best of all in the diner scene ("which one is him?"), complete with some hilariously dark 'red herring' moments; the snake farm; and the old couple who (with pitch-perfect Buchan / Hitchock irony) mistake Mann for an attacker.
Visuals: It's clear from the first frame that, as Fats Waller put it, "the gods are in the house". Details are pin-sharp, not just as to focal clarity, but in their layering up the metaphorical landscape of the story, with every single shot both perfectly framed and constantly informing character and/or building pace; and that's a lot of shots, often complex and kinetic ones. And all set in a serenely beautiful landscape, mocking the petty anxieties and feuds of the men and machines scuttling across it. All the more surprising therefore to find in the bonus material that DUEL was made in less than a month: just 13 days' shooting, including the 3 days of (ultimately unused) "spare plate" shots insisted on by the studio.
This DVD edition is deeply satisfying both for the transfer quality of the movie itself and for a joyous Spielberg interview. Refreshingly modest and candid, the director reveals his debt to a quick-witted PA, to his production team and actors, and how great achievement springs from being young and hungry. It's amusing by-the-by to see Spielberg look back on this period of coming to terms with the public impact of his own virtuosity, coming to realise how a seemingly minor movie shot in 13 days can outgrow its origins to signal his big breakthrough. (Among all the fascinating stuff about how to get a 50-mph lorry to go at 100 mph, he also, touchingly, points out a couple of minor rookie mistakes you might not otherwise have noticed.) Musing on the cultural impact that his astonishing debut piece had, stumbling upon a global audience, he notes that what started as simply a domestic "TV ratings Titanic" became, internationally, a bigger but quite different phenomenon: "Here I was making a roadkill tribute to High Noon and Hitchcock, then the Europeans were reading in all this esoteric abstract symbolism about class warfare in America". It also, so he says, earned him the instant and lasting respect of Fellini (cue archive photo to prove this!).
Hey look, this film is basically an hour of a geeky guy in a little red car being chased up and down the mountain by one helluva scary truck. You can find much more if you want to look for it - Dostoevsky stuff about man and machines, or the 20th century post-feminist crisis of male identity, or the jurisprudential question of whether we need to be able to attribute a motive to evildoing, etc - but, for me, what nails the simple greatness of this piece is that WE ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS in the end. On that level alone, it won't disappoint.
Movie Review: A Minor Masterpiece of Narrative Simplicity
Summary: 5 Stars
Since the astronomical success of `Jaws' in 1975, Steven Spielberg has had numerous opportunities to show us what he can do with a monster budget. Here, in what began life as an improbably good TV movie, we get to see what the youthful Spielberg could do with a budget of, by his later standards, more or less nothing. The answer is quite a lot. Indeed this is, in very many ways, a far better thriller than, say, `Jurassic Park' or `Minority Report'. It's a story of extreme simplicity. It begins with a middle-aged businessman, David Mann, about whom we know almost nothing except his name, that he is married and that he is heading for a business meeting and hopes to be back in time for dinner, sets off on a long road journey north from Los Angeles in a rather tired-looking red Plymouth that could do with a service. As he comes into the mountains he gets stuck behind a huge dirty great truck. He overtakes it but then it overtakes him back. So he overtakes it again and in doing so, it would seem, he annoys Mr Truck Driver. Annoys him quite a lot. To begin with Truck Driver won't let him overtake again, swerving about to block the road. Then Truck Driver maliciously waves him forward just as an oncoming car is approaching at speed. Then Truck Driver gives chase and sets out to run him off the road. From here on, this continuing game of cat and mouse makes up the entire film. There is never any explanation of why Truck Driver reacts in such an extreme way to so mild a provocation. Indeed we never ever see Truck Driver, only his darkened windscreen, his upper arms, and, at one point, his feet. (Not quite accurate that: we do, perhaps, see him in a group of people but neither we nor Mann knows which, if any, of them is he.) . His behaviour is so strange and his ability to double-guess Mann's movements so considerable that at times indeed it is a bit ambiguous whether we are watching a regular crime thriller or some sort of supernatural story. This extreme simplicity of plot and complete lack of any good explanation for Truck Driver's insane behaviour are both significant artistic risks to be taking but contribute highly effectively to creating a unique movie shot through with something of the terrifying intensity of a real nightmare.
Mann is the only character apart from the unseen truck driver and a few very tiny other roles and his role is ably carried by Dennis Weaver. This being low budget land, Weaver isn't the most famous actor in cinema history, but he nonetheless enjoys a certain iconic status among film lovers for having been the unforgettable `Night Man' in Welles' `Touch of Evil'. As that would lead one to expect, he is rather good at nervous, something much called for here.
The movie is very well thought out. Given the simplicity of the story, 90 minutes takes a bit of filling. Straight truck-chases-car would hardly fill it so it's necessary to raise and lower the intensity of the action and vary the forms taken by the truck driver's murderous aggression in ways that call for - and receive - a fair bit of ingenuity. And of course, it's beautifully directed.
I have only one quibble, just for the sake of finding fault. At times I was reminded of the fictitious screenwriters' manual employed by the Donald Kaufman in `Adaptation' with its central injunction to avoid voiceover at all cost. A hugely overstated injunction of course as voiceover can be a splendid thing in his place but here I think the manual has it dead right. Occasional voiceovers by Weaver, employed to let the audience listen in on his unspoken thoughts, seem something of a cop-out. The audience could and should be trusted to make sense of his actions well enough without them and I think the film would have been more powerful and dramatic had they simply been dispensed with. But that's about all I can think of to object to in this genuinely exciting and beautifully put together little movie.
Movie Review: Passing Lane Ahead...
Summary: 5 Stars
This was always a little Steven Spielberg masterpiece that always alluded me. Being a gigantic Spielberg fan, and him being the number one influential movie making source for me, I couldn't believe that I had never seen this little gem of a film. For years I kept hearing about this cool little road thriller that he did back in the early 70's. Before "Jaws", and before "The Sugarland Express". This one was an elusive little creature, as I couldn't track it down. Thankfully, they showed it last night on AMC and I finally got to see the "lost" Spielberg movie I hadn't seen. Was it worth the wait?. Yes and yes. I am always a sucker for a really good road thriller, and I have to say that this one is not only the starter of all road thrillers to come, but it's the granddaddy of them all. Spielberg was only about 24 years old when he directed this, and you can see from the start of the Spielbergian flourishes that will come into play later in his career. Dennis Weaver, best known from "Gunsmoke" and "McCleod", stars as David Mann. A traveling salesman. Weaver plays the character as a real normal, every day kind of guy, which makes the material hit closer to him, and make the audience more connected with the character and his plight. As Mann is traveling to get to an appointment thru the rustic scenery of California, he is confronted by a big, ugly, rusted looking rig. Menacing and imposing, the truck itself is a character all it's own. From here on out, the mysterious rig begins to play a serious and deadly cat and mouse chase with Mann. Wherever Mann goes, the truck is there. He stops to eat, use the phone, try a phone, everything. He can not the shake the killer truck off. Finally pushed to the edge, Mann tries to save his life and stop this menacing rig once and for all. The movie is perfectly executed by Spielberg, and it amazes one that this is a TV movie. They sure don't make TV movies like this anymore, folks. The truck is the character. It's not so much about the truck driver as the movie rolls on. It's focused solely on the truck. As if it is not being controlled and driven by a human being, but is it's own self. It is it's own person with a mind of it's own. A piece of rust and metal that will keep charging forward no matter what, until it finally gets it's prey. It's no big surprise that Spielberg has pointed out the similarity to this and to "Jaws". The film doesn't really have a whole lot of dialogue. What dialogue there is is Weaver's inner voice speaking to him. Trying to figure things out. It's a different and ingenious way of handling things. The fact that there is less talk in this movie, just adds to the overall vibe of the film. Spielberg really shoots the film as if you were there. As if you can feel the California heat on the pavement, and feel the rumblings of the truck behind you. He uses brilliant techniques to shoot the film, and shows you that this is one guy who will become a masterful storyteller. Unless you read the one star review below from a reviewer who didn't seem to get it at all. He makes the movie very bare, with little to no dialogue, no main characters other than Weaver's, and basically lets the suspense and the surroundings play itself out and tell the story. From beginning to end, this suspenseful yarn is pretty much non stop. Car chase to car chase, with nice little touches here and there that Spielberg sets up to make the viewer wonder who this driver could possibly be. It's a very impressive film debut, and after seeing this debut film, it's really no surprise that the director went on to become who he did.Movie Review: Roadrage Can Be Deadly!
Summary: 5 Stars
Duel is the only Matheson classic where the movie actually has much similarity to the original Matheson story. This may well be due to the fact that Matheson also wrote the screenplay but none the less this is a pretty unique factor for a Matheson story and something those who sat through the Wil Smith version of his masterpiece I Am Legend no doubt wish had happened there as well. What makes Matheson's masterpieces in print work, is the ordinary man verse whatever the unexpected element factor is (in the case of Duel a tormenting semi trailer). The books are so successful because the reader can place themselves in the situation in the character's shoes, they think what I would do here? Would I do the same thing as the man character? Would I survive? The ordinary man readers can relate to is usually lost in the movie version as film studios try and fill cinema seats with more heroic or popular actors than your every day person is but not so with the movie version of Duel. Not saying Dennis Weaver is an average actor by any means, just that he plays and every day relatable to the reader David Mann very, very well.
Even though this is a very low budget film (the film is made up of an ABC telemovie, shot quickly in twelve days and later expanded to movie length with the train crossing and car being pushed by truck and other added scenes necessary for the legal minimum length to show it in cinemas in Europe), I don't think that increasing budget or modernising it today Spielberg or anyone else could achieve a much better or edge of your seat thriller of a film. It is really only the beginning shots before David Mann encounters the truck with the opening credit fonts and shots of 1971 version of San Diego and other towns being a bit dated. Once the film quickly reaches the desert it could be happening in the modern day. The only thing I think where Spielberg's lack of experience let him down was the final couple of minutes as the vehicles climb a mountain where continuality isn't achieved with the truck sometimes being right behind and in the mirrors of the car, and sometimes being a long way behind when it should have been the same or even gaining.
Apart from the great movie itself the DVD also comes with three mini documentaries. The first being Spielberg recounting how he made Duel, the second a look at Spielberg and his early TV director career and the final an interview with Richard Matheson. The first and last are very interesting documentaries where you not only learn how the film was made/story was written but get to know some trivia as well. Spielberg points out due to the fact that the film was airing a few weeks after he shot it and he was out in the desert filming so never saw the camera on shots on screen, he never knew he was actually in Duel. You can see a glimpse of him in the back seat of the car in one shot and his reflection in the phone booth as David Mann calls the police and the truck bears down on him. Matheson also tells us along with recounting the story of the truck that harassed him and a buddy on the day JFK was assassinated that he didn't think the story could last the length of a TV movie so was going to add a wife in the car but someone talked him out of it and he's glad they did.
The original trailer and some poster images and photos are also included.
Duel is a classic film that you'll watch over and over again!