As Quentin Tarantino perched himself on his contemporaneous pop culture throne during the ‘90s, rising dozens of his replicated filmmakers almost tripped over in their quest to have the same creative schemes he had and soon croaked. It is understood that it is more complicated than it appears to be. Like all those wannabe Tarantinos of Pulp Fiction, so is Pulp Duchess to the work of Guy Ritchie, most notably Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, which was the director’s first major film all over the world.
The sudden changes in music, the font used to display characters’ names, excessive voice-over, and gritty interconnected crime stories – Duchess longs sticks out from the rest to the extent that Ritchie himself should have been given co-story credits for the film. Even if he might be very much inclined to this. Probably “atrocious” could have sufficed as a title.
Charlotte Kirk certainly can add “boring” to her bio as she portrays the rather adventurous Scarlet Monaghan. Robert McNaughton, an attractive gentleman played by Philip Winchester, catches her attention while she’s at the night club with her excruciatingly icy boyfriend. Chemistry sparkles instantly between Robert and Scarlett so very quickly they ditch Mr. Wrong and start hot romance until Scarlett find out how Robert earns his living.
It’s… in deep diamonds. And there is no escaping the fact that he also deals with some shady types hence why he has a loyal yet alongside some other criminals Danny Sean Pertwee and Baraka Hoji Fortuna in his camp. There’s Colin Egglesfield playing one Robert/Scarlett’s antagonist and Stephanie Beacham playing a crime lord of jewelry business who delivers one of the most excruciating phrases in the film.
At the risk of upsetting some players, Scarlett for some reason finds herself having to work a bit harder than she could have shouldered at that moment, after noticing the flirty, sharp dress that night. The script of Marshall, Kirk and Simon Farr strives to be a woman revenge story with a twist of Guy Ritchie’s “Kill Bill”something about woman revenge for all those who underestimated her.
Yet none of them come anywhere close to fulfilling that brief in any compelling way. Kirk is just not the most persuasive or a physically dominating character even in action (or any) scenes which may have prompted Marshall to resort to senseless violence in a dull movie trying to add some excitement. In one scene, a heated steel rod is applied to a torture subjects’ genital. In another, a gas-soaked rag is shoved into a man’s mouth and ignited. It’s everything you love about laughter wrapped up in ‘Snatch.’ No, it is not fun like that.
What’s worse is that the plotting and tone of “Duchess” is so silly that it borders on self-parody rather than pay homage to Ritchie, and this nauseatingly seems to go on forever – it’s overlong at just under two hours and I guarantee it feels at least twice that long. And when it all ends with a door wide open for a sequel? That is a promise. Scratch that. It is a threat.
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