Movie Review Duel

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1971 – Spoiler alerts I rewatched this tense thriller at weekend having seen it several times now and I still found it as gripping as ever. It is an early Stephen Spielberg film, originally made for TV but later expanded for cinema release. The plot is simple, and chillingly realistic. Dennis Weaver, soon to go on to play TV’s McCloud, is a mild-mannered traveling salesman crossing the Californian desert in his car. He overtakes a road-hogging big dark coloured rig bearing unspecified flammable cargo. As a result, the enraged trucker starts systematically following him relentlessly in the rig, and later starts trying to kill him. Weaver’s emotional state disintegrates more with each attack he survives before he is reduced to virtual hysteria when he finally destroys the truck. Aside from a few brief scenes at truck stop diners and a phone call conversation, Weaver has most of the movie to himself, in silence and occasional inner thoughts as the truck-driver pursues him. We never know who the truck driver is, seeing just a few glances of his arm through the cab window. His anonymity puts the emphasis on the increasingly menacing iconic truck. This is a low-key low-budget horror movie, based on a story by I Am Legend author, Richard Matheson. It gained Spielberg enough respect and money to make his later relentless killer feature, Jaws. Arthur Chappell