THE STORY – When an opportunity for twisted notoriety arises, a tormented 13-year-old, Sammy, enlists in a deadly competition.
THE CAST – Kue Lawrence, Christina Brucato, Oscar Nuñez, Jamad Mays & Michael Sean Tighe
THE TEAM – Todd Wiseman Jr. (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 91 Minutes
There’s a moment early in “The School Duel” that’s both quiet and sombre, when the camera takes us on a tour of a home full of loss. We see a pair of army boots beneath a wooden cross. A boar’s head watches from the wall, and nearby rests an old photo of a father and son hunting. These quiet images whisper the legacy that 13-year-old Sammy Miller (Kue Lawrence, in a phenomenal first leading role) inherits. By the time he appears on screen – flipping through videos on diet tips, fashion hacks, and how to “be respected” – you already understand the world that made him. In Todd Wiseman Jr.’s blistering directorial debut, which screened at the Fantasia International Film Festival, violence isn’t just present in society – it’s policy. “The School Duel” dares to ask what happens when patriotism is just another word for destruction.
Set in a near-future Florida where gun control is not only outlawed but heretical, this bleak dystopia imagines a state that has seceded not just from the nation, but from reason. Here, the right to bear arms, love God, and uphold the values of the forefathers supersedes all else. With school shootings at an all-time high, the state’s radical response isn’t to disarm – it’s to institutionalize violence through a government-sanctioned bloodsport: the School Duel. Designed to curb future mass shootings, this barbaric system pre-emptively pits the so-called “problem kids” against America’s idealized young warriors: the “Martyrs” vs. the “Kings.” “If you’ve got a problem, don’t take it to school. Take it to the duel” is its slogan.
Enter Sammy. Small, meek, and a loner, he’s constantly bullied and dismissed in his testosterone-fueled school, where boys are trained not just to fight, but to become soldiers. Strength is virtue, violence is expected, and sensitivity is weakness. His coach (Jamad Mays) tells the boys he’s simply preparing them for whatever war they’ll grow up fighting. For Sammy, who flexes in the mirror and rehearses how to sound strong, the hunger for respect becomes an all-consuming fire.
When he finally snaps and clocks a bully in the head with a metal drain cover, it’s not just cathartic, it’s disqualifying. In a society that literally builds boys into weapons, his small act of rebellion brands him as dangerous. A hypocritical notion, especially spoken by a principal whose walls are flanked by glass cases of guns. The irony is thick and intentional. They now have a Martyr.
Lawrence brings vulnerability and fiery intelligence to the role. You watch a child forced to play tough, to unlearn gentleness. As he’s ushered into the Duel by a government handler (Michael Sean Tighe), encouraged by a disturbingly charismatic governor (Oscar Nuñez), you feel the film pulling with dread. There’s a glimmer of hope: protestors gather in other states, chanting against this dehumanizing ritual and brainwashing of children. But inside the house, children are being handed AR-15s and told that dying for your state is a mark of manhood.
Lawrence’s Sammy is no hero, but neither is he a villain. He’s a kid trying to make sense of a world that tells him being a man means holding a gun and hunting something, anything. His single mother, played with raw urgency by Christina Brucato, prays and pleads, her protective instinct painfully inadequate in a place where traditional Christian values don’t mean anything when those in the pew believe in a gun more than a cross.
Todd Wiseman Jr. directs with clarity. The film’s monochrome flattens the bloodshed, erases distractions, and presents the horror with a sober, historical weight. This isn’t a future: it’s a warning. The cinematography peers with quiet dread, crawling with American iconography and drenched in a toxic patriotism that feels only slightly removed from today’s headlines.
When the Duel finally begins, the tension is unbearable. Kids, barely teenagers, are dropped into a battlefield with assault rifles. They kill. They die. Not graphically, but brutally, all the same. And as the camera drifts between the faces of boys trying to be men, Sammy’s mother watches in agony in front of the TV, and his coach, who once preached valour, now reckons with its consequences. A question echoes louder than any gunfire: “What is this all for?”
“The School Duel” is, at its core, a savage satire about a society so obsessed with its right to bear arms that it sacrifices its own children on the altar of nationalism. It dares to ask if patriotism has a limit and what happens when you blow past it. In doing so, Wiseman Jr. doesn’t just twist the narrative. He detonates it.
