The Last Duel (2021)

Directed by Ridley Scott. Starring Matt Damon, Jodie Comer, Adam Driver, Ben Affleck, Harriet Walter, Nathaniel Parker, Tallulah Haddon, Marton Csokas, Željko Ivanek, Alex Lawther, Michael McElhatton, Adam Nagaitis. [R]

This blunt, bloody historical drama is a fourteenth-century soap opera dressed in full armor and bad haircuts, telling a Rashômon-esque story of the wife (Comer) of a French knight, Sir Jean de Carrouges (Damon), accusing her husband’s former squire and friend, Jacques Le Gris (Driver), of raping her. Without any witnesses, she only has her word to back up her claim (and the word of a woman doesn’t travel far), resulting in a trial by combat with all three of their lives at stake. The “he said, she said” thrust of the conflict carries greater weight in the Me Too era, a forceful reminder of how little trust victimized women are afforded in patriarchal societies, and if the script by Nicole Holofcener, Affleck and Damon goes wanting for shrewd nuance in its depiction of these execrable values, the bold, bashing approach feels appropriate for the roughhewn material and milieu. Energetic camerawork and assertive performances abound; although Affleck is a touch too contemporarily mannered as a count who favors Le Gris, his amusing spin leavens all the gloomy, bottled anger surrounding him. The masterstroke comes in the way the story is told (and re-told) through the three primary perspectives, saving Comer’s narrative for last so that when the rousing, brutally-choreographed duel promised in the title is finally shown, she’s the one that the audience sympathizes with, while Carrouges and Le Gris are mere bruised and battered tools contesting for her vindication. Despite the title (taken from Eric Jager’s true story tome), this wasn’t actually France’s last judicial trial by combat; that one would come over 150 years later in the mid-sixteenth century. Director Scott and all three screenwriters also co-produced.

83/100