The screenwriter Gerald Vaughan-Hughes gave the supporting cast tense, epigrammatic dialogue and they deliver it as if it were Shaw or Wilde. Tom Conti is a puckish, philosophic army surgeon; Albert Finney an orotund, preening police official; Edward Fox a zealous Napoleonic colonel with a sidelong glance like an evil eye. But its Keitel and Carradine’s movie, and by the end they become expressive icons, with Feraud looking increasingly like an exiled Napoleon. Shrouded by mists—dew, fogs, vapors, smoke; lit by dawn, dusk, or by the chancy sun of cloudy days; surrounded by skittering geese and gallant horses, stern seconds and knots of dumbstruck witnesses, the duellists pass simultaneously into history and legend. Yet the film is never static—its fighting flares up with a suddenness that makes you sit straight up in your seat.
i dont know anyone whos seen this movie, which is a shame. i also dont know anyone whos seen another directorial debut starring harvey keitel called fingers, which is not.
