Get Duked!

The Most Dangerous Game heads off to the Scottish wilderness as four kids doing their Duke Of Edinburgh Scheme need to survive against a gun crazy psycho, in this Edgar Wright inspired scatter brained horror/action/comedy…..

In a time where new material to enjoy is scarce as we all await for the big hitters to finally arrive on our screens, Get Duked! feels like a welcome addition into our lives, an old fashioned caper that makes us just sit back, relax and smile along and in these dire times, what more can we ask for?

Thanks to their badly thought practical joke in which they blew up a school toilet, pupils  Dean (Ryan Gordon), Duncan (Lewis Gribben) and DJ Beatroot (Viraj Juneja) are forced to take part in the Duke Of Edinburgh scheme in which they are left on a Scottish mountain and have to find their way back on their own with just a use of a map.

With a home schooled kid Ian (Samuel Bottomley) along for the journey to get that much wanted “certificate”, the foursome start their long walk home, cracking jokes and doing stupid things, unaware that there is a masked psycho with a gun, following their every move and he has his trigger finger facing right at them.

Plot-wise its that simple and lets be honest, its a theme we have all seen before, but there is an infectious charm to it all thanks the engaging performance by the boys that carries the picture, more so when some stupid plot developments will have you rolling your eyes instead of the required belly laughs.

But when its funny, it generally is, even through the film does have a scatter approach when it reaches its middle mark, with a musical interlude, hallucination drug sequences and a bread thief sub-plot that wasn’t even funny when the gag first reared its ugly head.

The obvious social commentary about class divide in which rich bored aristocrats want to rid the world of rap, drug takings dimwits is there for all to see with the running gag that the boys actually think its the Duke Of Edinborugh taking shots of them, raising a smile for this viewer.

But director Ninian Doff refuses to go too heavy on making this point, instead filling a 90 minute film with enough charm and an endearing heartbeat that by the time we get to the chaos and bloodshed, we generally want these boys to survive this ordeal.

And when a film manages to achieve that connection with its characters, which is a hard thing to do, then as a film fan you know that what you have been watching is a “bloody good show” for us all.

Recommended.