Neil Marshall seems to want what Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino had in the early aughts. For his latest outing, the once-promising English filmmaker behind horror films like “Dog Soldiers” and “The Descent” scales back his interest in frights for a more straightforward tale of fights, but fails to land nearly every punch he throws. Rather than build on the template his aforementioned peers built on themselves, Marshall does nothing for the ensemble crime thriller genre other than play the hits, which would’ve been bearable had he actually done so on key and with some care or nuance.

Right from the get-go, “Duchess” unveils itself as paint-by-numbers contrivance with an in media res sequence that drops us into the middle of a scene between main character, Scarlett (Charlotte Kirk), and an unseemly goon trying to get his rocks off. A fight ensues, blood is spurt, the goon goes out the window,...