A review of Duality of Retribution

Today I am going to review Duality of Retribution. This is a movie by handicapped entertainment. I, like many others, found this movie because two of the Evil Iguana Productions actors are in this movie. One of which, Allen Murphy, is the star of the film. The second, Craig Deering is on of his victims.

Here is the trailer

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT

Now, there are a few different areas of covering this specific film. Either from a Story Standpoint, an Acting Standpoint, or a Quality of the actual production Standpoint. Each one of these on a very different level than the others.

From a Story Standpoint, this is not what it looks like in the trailer. In the trailer this appears to be a fast-paced action film, when in truth, it is a bit slow and a film that is designed to make you think. It is more Character Driven than Action. If you go watch it thinking that this is going to be like an EIP video, you are going to be disappointed. The story is about a person named Steve who essentially goes on this killing spree across his local neighborhood. Each of the people that he kills in some way or another insulted him, rejected him, or got him in trouble. After the first kill, he clearly feels upset by what he has done, but then goes out and kills again. This continues until he has killed five people and the film then ends. Then, during the credits, some kind of 911 call is placed that, to me, sounds like Steve’s mom coming home and finding that he’s killed himself. You can’t really understand most of this call aside from a few words and phrases including, “So much blood.... He’s not breathing.... He’s dead.... I just came home....” Then a lot of screaming bloody murder at the end. So, in some ways its original, but then in other ways it isn’t. It leaves a lot of open holes and lets you take what you want from it.

From an Acting Standpoint, I really have to say that this movie is fantastic! Especially when talking about Allen Murphy’s performance. He blew me away. I found that I sympathized with him, even though he was going around killing people for minor indiscretions against him. You can tell that this is a very dynamic character, and its one that I would have loved to see him do more wit; To find out if there was something that set this all off, or if he just snapped on his own. A few of his victims I was not impressed with their performance, especially his second victim. I found him to be fake, and he was just going on and on for no apparent reason. Craig’s performance was unfortunately not one of the best I have seen by him. Merely average, where as I have come to expect fantastic performances out of him. (I am an EIP fan because of his acting skills after all) So, all-in-all I thought the acting for the most part was good, or amazing (Or in one case, horrid unfortunately.)

Finally there is the actual Production of the movie. I’m pretty split on this aspect of it. I absolutely adore this score. It fits exactly where it should and definitely enhances the emotion of the movie. But then there are a few major camera issues. I can hear the camera operator moving his hand on the camera a lot. I actually see the camera operator’s shadow or reflection a few times. And then some of the shots are so close that I can barely see whats going on. Now, this might be intentional, but I personally do not like it. Then there are a few other things, like why is there never blood on the knife? And why don’t we ever see him stab anyone? Now I understand that this is a college film, and obviously, they can’t do all the cool stuff all the people in Hollywood can, but it still makes the film hard to focus on when you know he really isn’t stabbing them.

All in all I give this movie a 7.5/10 The acting is mostly superb, the story believable, but somewhat hard to understand, and the production average with a few issues.


So, here is the film as I saw it on google. What do you think?