Duel - the movie

Duel – The movie (1971)

Director: Steven Spielberg

My Rating:

Please note: Some parts of the article may ruin the climax /thrill point/ suspense of the movie.

ADVISABLE NOT TO READ FOR WOULD BE SPECTATORS OF THE MOTION PICTURE!

What do you think makes a good movie? I know, hard to predict. But then this is why we believe beyond doubt that ‘movie business is speculative and insecure’. Should you fail, there may not be a second chance imposing a far more complex and vulnerable situation at your disposal. Movie making is one thing that is judged by not one but many evaluators with different tastes and different definitions of entertainment.

However one name emerges in unison with appraisal for his work and its details that he engrosses himself into. He is crafted to be a dream merchant. Magnanimously recognized the world over as ‘Spielberg’! Friday night comes and goes but this name never fades its charm. No doubt we, the generation today, know him through ‘A.I.’, ‘Saving Private Ryan’, ‘Minority Report’, ‘Catch me if you can’, ‘The Terminal’, ‘The lost world’, etc.

A Plymouth Valiant, a Peterbilt tanker truck, California deserted back roads and anxiety-ridden David Mann (Dennis Weaver) were the only props that bolstered this psychological thriller. A feat no director could/would ever try to pull on their spectators- just one character, almost no dialogues and nothing but two vehicles in a ‘duel’. Unrealistically heart- crunching, nail biting and mysteriously angst are all just words that I can use to describe my experience with the movie. However they’ll mean ‘nada’ unless one retrospects the experience. Maybe I’m incorrigible to my bad taste with movies but this one surely is an exception.

‘Duel’ - a weapon-ed fight between two non-synergetic entities to rule out the possibility of weaker surviving the conclusion. Dennis Weaver has been true to his part. He successfully portrayed an anxiety ridden business person traveling for a meeting. The internal voices of David Mann make sure you aren’t left out the loop in the mystery. A clear idea of David’s mental condition and the reclining grip over his emotions. A Peterbilt tanker truck makes for a perfect villain, with its honking air-horn and unchallenged power. Much more interesting to note during the movie is that the Peterbilt has multiple license plates on its front bumper as if each represented a mark for each of its prey. Such personification gave the movie-goers something to hate, a villain, a tanker truck; Completing the missing part of showing the actual face of the truck driver.

Spielberg admits that he owes his big career to Duel. He has used the tanker truck’s honking air-horn in Jaws. He explains that this is the way he had to thank Duel for being his spring board.