Duel

This Stephen Spielberg movie is one of his most famous early works. Originally aired as an ABC Movie of the Week in November, 1971 the movie was later cut for distribution in theaters overseas. This movie is considered the movie that launched Speilberg on his way.

A very simple movie it stars Dennis Weaver as an electronics salesman named David Mann. Traveling on a two lane highway he comes up behind an old rusty Peterbilt truck which is going very slow and spewing a great deal of smoke. He passes the vehicle only to soon thereafter have the vehicle pass him and then once in front of him slow down again. From that point on David Mann is terrorized by the truck.

My son when watching it with me kept asking me if this was all there was to the movie. Did something else happen? I explained to him that the key to the movie was the suspense. We see Weaver's character talking to himself, we hear this thoughts to himself as he wonders how he can get out of this predicament. As the movie progresses and the car and truck progress up into the mountains and down through the canyons the situation becomes life threatening. The driver of the truck tailgates, eventually pushing and hitting his car from behind. Forcing him to drive down the mountain faster than he can David Mann struggles to keep control of his car.

At one point Mann stops at a diner and goes into a washroom to clean up and settle himself down. When he returns to the restaurant he notices the truck outside and must contemplate that the driver is with him inside. A strong scene develops where he reviews each customer and wonders if indeed that is the driver.

This movie is simple and for those kids and folks who have watched movies in the last twenty to thirty it may not offer enough. Perhaps so, but in some cases less is more and I think that Spielberg has directed a movie here that can only be seen as underrated and under recognized. This is a very suspenseful movie and makes me miss the movie of the week days when we only had three channels and those channels offered some original movies two to three times a week.