A faux-elegant fable about how not to resolve your differences, made for dudes, by dudes, “The Duel” arrives at a time of intense division (and no small amount of scrutiny over gun use) in America. Releasing as a one-night-only screening via Iconic Events on July 31 before hitting streaming in August, the edgy comedy looks sharp enough, but lands like a rapier with a cork on it, as Dylan Sprouse and Callan McAuliffe play longtime besties who try to settle a dispute the old-timey way … by blowing each other away with pistols.

“The Duel” feels like a pretty clever idea at first, to the extent I found myself wondering why nobody had thought of it before, only to wind up asking why its two writer-directors didn’t think of it more. As it happens, my library contains no fewer than four books called “The Duel,” the shortest of which (by Joseph Conrad) runs a slender 112 pages,...