It might be a cop out to describe a film as one you’ll either “love or hate”, but the style of Riley Stearns (“Faults,” “The Art of Self Defense”) is certainly a divisive one. His films tend to trade in absurdity, with characters delivering purposefully stilted dialogue with conviction and commitment. Yet they’re also dark and sometimes even incredibly violent, leading to a genuinely odd cocktail of a cinematic experience.
“Dual” is, unsurprisingly, pretty much another example of the kinds of films Stearns has been making for years. It's awkward and funny in its extremely blunt world and dialogue, and finds humor in this bluntness and the general absurdity of everything. It’s the kind of movie that makes you roll your eyes at the weirdness on display, deriving humor from mostly that sole source.
Karen Gillan (“Guardians of the Galaxy,” “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle”) stars as Sarah, a young woman with an undisclosed terminal illness who decides to have herself cloned, apparently a common practice in this not to distant future time period, so that her loved ones are able to go on living. However, after she makes a miraculous recovery, she falls victim to a law instated after the cloning process was introduced: to prevent multiple clones of people from running rampant, she’ll have to duel her clone to the death in one years time.
It's a simple premise that gives way to plenty of absurdities, and if it seems like that word is being overused in this review, well that’s just how Riley Stearns makes movies. It’s all about the weirdness, the uncomfortable nature of it all, and how that collides with people who just want to live their lives, forced into difficult situations.
Aaron Paul (“Breaking Bad,” “BoJack Horseman”) plays Trent, a combat trainer Sarah hires to train her for the duel, and he provides a source of silly seriousness. It's hard to tell if he’s actually good at his job or if he’s just a cheap, inexpensive failed trainer, but Paul is easy to like. Beulah Koale (“Hawaii Five-0 (2017),” “Shadow in the Cloud”) plays Peter, Sarah’s boyfriend, and he’s a weirdly emotional nugget of a character, both irritating and heartbreaking at the same time, balancing the tricky line Stearns likes to walk so well.
At only a little over ninety minutes, it's not a long journey and things move fairly quickly, but even then it can feel like there’s a lack of things happening. It’s a sparsely populated future world that’s more interested in hinting at the darker realities of things that have happened since widespread cloning has become a reality. But it doesn’t overcome the fact that it just hints at these things, and it results in a film with a largely cold feeling to it all. It might be on purpose, but it still feels off putting in an intentional kind of way.
While every film should stand on its own, it's hard not to compare this to Stearns last film “The Art of Self Defense.” Both utilize the same overall styles, but the big emotional core of “Self Defense” is missing here, because as good as Gillan is at delivering the dialogue and how especially good she is in the dual roles, the character of Sarah is just hard to like. You do root for her, and she isn’t uninteresting as a main character, but it feels like there’s a lack of a change to her as a character. She trains and becomes more physically fit, but a lot of the more emotional changes we’re told about don’t play out on screen; we’re just told about them.
That’ll likely lead to plenty of people bouncing off “Dual” and it's hard to argue against that. It’s a cold film with a very specific perspective and sense of world. The script is remarkably dark and funny though, and it's all communicated well both visually and by its small cast. It has so many little details and things going on under the surface that those who wish to commit to this absurd little tale will likely get a kick out of it. But, at the risk of repeating myself in a review for a film about cloning, this is a film you’re likely to either love or hate. 3.5/5
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