In 14th century France, a grievous crime occurs.  While Sir Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon) is away, his wife, Marguerite (Jodie Comer), is ambushed and raped.  She accuses Jaques Le Gris (Adam Driver), a friend of her husband, of the crime.  Enraged, Sir Jean appeals to King Charles VI (Alex Lawther) to settle this matter through judicial combat where God will protect the innocent and damn the guilty. 

Ridley Scott directs The Last Duel from a script penned by a writing team of Damon, Ben Affleck (who also appears in a supporting role: Pierre d’Alençon), and Nicole Holofcener.  Structured similarly to Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950), the 152-minute film also draws heavily from Scott’s own affinity for historical epics.  As a creative experiment, it is an admirable effort but there are times where the structure seems to hinder the script and the overall storytelling at work. 

The greatest instance of this is in Chapter 1 which tells the story through the eyes of Sir Jean.  It has the challenging task of giving us the framework for the film that we will revisit two more times before the end credits roll.  It moves through the story at breakneck speeds often taking large jumps in time or place and we are largely unaware as an audience of what happened in-between.  Given the nature of the film, this is a feature and not a bug, but it makes the first act a little inaccessible for anyone expecting a traditionally paced narrative.  Careful attention is needed to learn the general trajectory of the film, and while there are chances to double back and fill in the details later, this style of storytelling is understandably a turn-off to some. 

Damon seems to struggle in the role of a knight that is trying to prove himself.  We see some of his combat skills, but the majority of the film does not take place on the battlefield.  It might actually be a bit of perfect casting, though, as much like Carrouges, Damon excels in the fight sequences, but it is when he must be around people that he becomes awkward and bumbling.  He is constantly making strange, sour faces and his delivery of many of his lines seem disjointed as if he is struggling with the language.  The script is not overly “olde,” and as the actor also shared the title of screenwriter for the film, it seems odd that he delivers one of the weakest performances of the film.   

Chapter 2 tells us the story through Le Gris’ point of view and definitely lends the necessary context which was missing from Chapter 1.  Driver plays an interesting role here as he is not at all a likeable character given his actions against the Carrouges, but of the three men at the front of the film he is the most captivating to watch.  He routinely looks the best – not only in his general costuming, but also the comfort in which he wears the garments – and it helps that he also has the more robust role among the two other male characters.  This chapter also follows Affleck’s d’Alençon; an underdeveloped playboy role in which the actor looks distractingly bad with bleached blonde hair.   

What Chapter 2 does well, though, is that it begins to set up the moral framework of the film.  After attacking Marguerite, Le Gris goes to the church to confess his sins and we start to see how this society operates.  Later, in Chapter 3, during the trail, it becomes much clearer that this is a man’s world.  While it can seem at once a moral victory that Sir Jean is taking this matter to trial, it is not so because in the eyes of the law at the time Le Gris is accused of defiling Sir Jean’s property.  Couple that with a gross misunderstanding of how pregnancy works, it is nice to see how far we have come as a society in recognizing women as people, but it is also quite disheartening to hear the court use some arguments that are still used today against sexual assault survivors. 

Finally, we get to Chapter 3, which promises to tell the truth through the eyes of Marguerite.  Thankfully, it breezes through most of what we have seen twice now, only giving us a few anchor points to help us keep our place in the story.  Comer truly excels in the role of the lady of the house and has plenty of girl boss moments throughout as she is the head of household when her husband is off on the various military campaigns.  She is the real standout of the cast, not only because she has the most to do, but it is so refreshing to see a story set in this time and place be told through the female lens.  There is clear animosity between her and her mother-in-law Nicole de Carrouges (Harriet Walter) which is passingly interesting and while the script tries to expand on their relationship, it doesn’t quite work. 

The strangest thing about The Last Duel is that for a film that is looking to show how much we have improved on our understanding of sexual assault and how we treat the victims and survivors better, it chooses to show us the rape scene twice.  When we see it for the first time in Chapter 2, Le Gris is still very forceful with Marguerite, and we see essentially the same brutal sequence twice in the span of forty-five minutes.  Given that both parties recollect this encounter similarly, it tells us this is the truth.  Le Gris knows this.  Scott knows this, but he does not turn the camera away which is an unnecessarily cruel choice.     

The final act of the film is the titular duel.  Scott is at his finest here pulling from his experience on past close combat works such as Gladiator (2000) and Kingdom of Heaven (2005).  Technically, it, like the rest of the film is very well put together.  One of the unique things it does is that it really does not rely on a score.  It is not a purely diegetic film – Harry Gregson-Williams provides an organ forward and choral score – but this choice to not score the finale stands out in stark opposition to modern filmmaking conventions.   

The Last Duel is the work of a master filmmaker and clearly the team is very passionate about the story they sought to tell.  Scott shows us beautiful countrysides and with cinematography by Dariusz Wolski, even the dark castle interiors do not hide the details in shadows.  It is an admirable effort, but it’s hard to say that Marguerite ends up with the agency over her story that the film wants to tout.  It would be very difficult to do, admittedly, given the way of the world back in the 14^th century, but Comer carries the role with poise and gives three very distinct performances in each of the telling of the story.  The Last Duel is a well-executed experiment in storytelling, and while there are a few flaws throughout, it is still a very enjoyable and interesting film to witness.