Movie Review: Duel (1971)

Duel is just good and well made enough to make you forget about the fact that it’s kind of stupid. It’s just a dumb premise made in an intelligent way, and I guess you could say early Spielberg was a master of that kind of thing, because Jaws might be the best movie ever made that fits that description.

Anyways, Duel has a few resemblances to Jaws (I actually first heard about this movie as a kid when watching like a making-of Jaws featurette), but with a killer truck.

It’s sort of Jaws meets The Twilight Zone’s “The Hitchhiker,” which is fitting, considering the screenplay is written by Richard Matheson, who wrote a bunch of stuff for that show (though not that episode), and if I’m not mistaken, Spielberg’s first directorial credit was a segment of the Night Gallery pilot, so both writer and director have some familiarity with Rod Serling.

Dennis Weaver does a fine job here, and it probably wouldn’t be as tense if we didn’t have as good an actor in the lead.

But for whatever reason, I had trouble getting truly invested in this. It’s good. It’s fine. But I did want something more, though perhaps that’s just me having too high of expectations.

Rating: 7/10