Old-school wuxia comedy with a glossy post-handover makeover
An old-school wuxia comedy with a glossy post-handover makeover, The Duel bounces between political conspiracies, mistaken identities, romance, comedy and increasingly absurd action sequences with enough CGI and star power to light up Victoria Harbour. It's less like a straight martial arts film than a variety show built around the promise of a sword fight that never comes. It's very much a hybrid effort, and the comedy is ill at ease with the heavy drama that occurs later on, but credit to Director Andrew Lau because, for the most part, the film is utterly gorgeous with plenty of soft colour and wonderful scale. The uneven silliness and fluid fight choreography are ultimately a victim of the incomprehensible editing, and unfortunately, it all kind of falls apart when paired with the comedic writings of Wong Jing and the hyper robotic leading performance from Nick Cheung, looking fairly ridiculous with dreadlocks and a pencil moustache. He lacks a well-defined comic persona, coming across as more annoying than entertaining, but here his presence is strangely welcome as it looks like he is at least enjoying lampooning the straight-faced drama. Andy Lau is always a welcome presence, and I kinda love Vicki Zhao, but, for the most part, The Duel is a rather middling but glossy affair. Messy, overstuffed, but reminiscent of other early nineties wuxia comedies.
Was this review helpful to you?
