Stylish thriller with aesthetism consciously carried to absurd. Anya Taylor-Joy is now tucked in every movie, as Scarlett Johansson was in 00s and Nataly Portman on the eve of the new century--but, here, in the role of a call girl replacing an English tof's girlfriend on the guest list she is wonderful. She even stands up---on screen and as a performer--to a formidable Ralph Fiennes. Michael Hoult in a role of a British cuisine-obsessed upper classman is also very good.
H. L. Borges commented that humanity only invented four stories and doomed to repeat then to infinity. Obviously, even the stories of stories have dried up. The movie is the hybrid between "Airbud" (a basketball-playing dog) and Michigan J. Frog from the Looney Tunes. And no effort by actors can exculpate this fact.
All-star cast of the movie (Christian Bale, Zoe Saldana, Margot Robbie, Rami Malek, Michael Shannon, De Niro, etc., etc.) did not assure victory. Beginning as a pastiche with imitation of Wes Anderson, it quickly devolves into a formulaic, moralistic thriller. Bale is wonderful, Robbie's smile is worth only slightly less than Gioconda's but this does not make a movie fly. It is not bad at all; just undercooked. Probably, evolved from a theatrical play with dialogue suitable for the stage but not for a fast-pacing movie.
Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. Wes Anderson's oeuvre now has its imitators and not bad at that. The movie even employs Saoirse Ronen and Adrien Brody -- the constant presence in Anderson's movies. Totally unmemorable but well worth the price of admission.
A great idea marred by flawed execution. Three insert stories were not sufficiently integrated into the main narrative. Only the doodles of Maxwell equations on the paper sheets of the third wife of an Istanbul merchant connect the stories with the supposedly electromagnetic nature of the Jinn. Cinematic mastery of Jim Jarmusch in "The dead don't die" with the same Tilda Swinton in the principal role made the movie--not among Jarmusch's masterpieces--much more well structured and wrought.
The movie is too brainy for a melodrama and not sufficiently gripping for a crime thriller. A fashion to invite English actresses to play girls from a deep South resulted in a perfect English of a "marsh girl" obtained through a few language lessons from her suitor. And the heroine dresses as a contemporary Hollywood starlet for an audition. This is vaguely explained as her receiving Church donations from the public in the not-so-wealthy Southern town collected by a supportive wife of a black store owner -- supposedly from a segregated congregation. Swamp house of an unemployed alcoholic looks inside like an illustration to the "House and Country". It would be more interesting, if the authors abscond the ending of the book and make a heroine's Army brother or the shopkeeper's wife as a murderer.
The Duke continues English tradition of the taped theatrical plays with the elements of a movie. Jim Broadbent is wonderful but the understated performance of Helen Mirren with hardly a hundred words throughout the whole movie supports her position as a Queen of an English cinema.
