Gun Control: What More Can Be Sa(i)d? 💪🇺🇸
America's pastime, pushed beyond the brink.
Dear Moviegoers,
As much as The School Duel may remind people of The Hunger Games, it is most assuredly not a YA (young adult) movie. There are lines that can be drawn to Battle Royale and perhaps to other daring Japanese cinema fare, but as much as audiences prefer to be separated from discomfort by a gulf of fantasy, The School Duel is just too awfully plausible a scenario, given the state of America today. If anything, this is Bowling for Columbine 2: The Insane Solution.
With Presidents like Donald Trump, with Governors like Jeff Landry or Ron DeSantis, and with movements like "Make America Great Again," the precedent for utterly absurd fascism and violence as ritual has been made. The School Duel isn't a dystopic future, but a route to ruin.
Here, a young boy - considered to be of adult responsibility (and accountability) in this movie's state of Florida - is tormented by ruthless bullies and a school administration that treats troubled youth with contradiction and callousness. In one confrontation, a case of machine guns stands tall behind the desk of his principal, all the while he is being preached to about non-violence.
Guns are everywhere, teasing and seducing teens (and younger ones) with their implications of power, strength, and virtue. Commercials across media hype the military and "the fight within," a slogan that's sold to the public as a reverse way of not dealing with gun control.
In fact, gun control has been outlawed as an option.
You see, to deal with the escalating volume of school shootings, the Florida of this film has instituted an annual "duel" event, where students volunteer and are selected to compete in a game of gunfire, in a twisted effort to cleanse anger from the collective souls of the youth, who are considered to be solely to blame for their mass deaths. The logic is silly, and the whole shebang turns into a televised competition, which breeds its own kind of rah-rah aggression among those who watch, eagerly and startlingly. Gambling? Probably. Pride? Sure. Killing as sport? Duh. And it must get worse every year.
The School Duel is rarely subtle, putting American values together with Christian rhetoric and iconography, with AR-15 symbols pinned on top. No Punisher logos are witnessed, but those would've been seen as "cliche" or "old" in the Florida of the movie. The most unsubtle figure is the state's Governor, played distractingly by Oscar Nunez. While he's certainly on board with the story, playing up the opportunistic and vile facade of a leader, he's also the accountant from TV's The Office. Apologies, but I'm just being honest.
Words like kings and martyrs are tossed around as ranks and tiers to be won as medals, and indeed they are in the end. And boy, does it have an ending that left my jaw dropped. Showing people mowing their lawns while carrying glocks in holsters pales in comparison to funerals for child victims of gun violence, treated as celebratory victories for society at large. They die so we can live? Crowns of a different kind for the martyrs, it seems. Celebrity for the kings, it's certain. Money is spent, time is wasted, lives are obliterated, and nothing is learned.
When the troubled kid at the center of the film puts on a Burger King-like party crown while acting out a duel victory in the woods, I nearly cried. The sheer audacity left me speechless. The School Duel goes for the gut and never freezes when its target is in sight.
Shocked, shaken, and shook.
If UFC fights can be booked for the White House lawn...
5/5
The School Duel is now playing in limited release. Also available for rent on Amazon.
