When I saw that "The Duel" was an Andrew Lau film, produced by Wong Jing, I expected a great deal. Nobody is better at deflating and spoofing the absurdness of the movie business than Wong Jing. There are a couple of good spoofs on Lau's own "Stormriders" and "A Man Called Hero," unintentional or not, but they are far and few in betweeen.

Pop stars Ekin Cheng and Andy Lau are the duelists. The two work well because they portray archetypes that allow them to be veneer and wooden. Andy Lau has never been better in a costume piece than in "The Duel." Andy Lau's acting is getting better. He seems to be concentrating on this aspect of his career. When Andy's coup attempt to usurp the emperor fails, the grand tragedy actually works. We empathize with Lau's Yip Cool Sing. Ekin's blandness also works in this film. That is more to do with the fact that we don't see much of his Snowblower character except as a glorified cameo.

Nick Cheung tries to provide the comic relief, but I kept on thinking that this would have been a perfect vehicle for Stephen Chow, but he probably cost too much. The more I see Nick, the more I miss the antics of Chow. Nick just seems a little too lackluster. And that cheapo mustache looked terrible.

The movie suffers from long periods of tedium and very little action, save for the beginning and the end of this movie. The film could have used some editing to tighten up the pace and to get rid of the extraneous characters. Nick being one of them--he didn't add or subtract from the film, only diverting the attention from Andy and Ekin's duel. Wong Jing shied away from more parody, probably because Andrew Lau was on hand to direct and he wanted to spare him some of the lampooning.

"The Duel" was a half-hearted attempt, which could have been better if Wong Jing took the reigns and went for the jugular, to either go all the way to parody the comic book superhero genre or to play it straight. The movie straddled the fence and turned out to be just another bland costume piece.