The Last Duel Movie Review
Putting aside the lack of accents and some casting choices, Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel is a historical film the likes of which the 83-year-old English director could only pull off.
Based on a true story, The Last Duel presents a multi-year account of events as told by three different characters. Each character is set on a collision course with a duel the likes of which France would never see again – the last officially sanctioned duel in the region. And finding out how each one got there is like filling in the colors of a painting. As the full frame develops, things become extremely revealing, if in The Last Duel’s case, a bit troubling.
Matt Damon’s Sir Jean de Carrouges knows nothing but war, and is constantly looking for the next battle to keep his finances in order. He is seen as a buffoon by the French nobility, but his friendship with Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver) has helped him build something of a career. After meeting and eventually marrying Marguerite (Jodie Comer), the trio’s fates are woven together in a way none of them could have expected, and everything is beset by their individual accounts of “the truth.”
The Last Duel cleverly splits its story into three distinct chapters, told from Jean, Jacques, and Marguerite’s perspectives. A heinous act has forced Jean to challenge Jacques to the eponymous duel, but the motivations and the emotions that lead to that duel are different for each. Jean is fighting for his own personal honor, even if he may not believe Marguerite is being fully honest. Jacques, in a way, is fighting for love, or at least infatuation. While Marguerite, who the film portrays as the only truth teller in the whole ordeal, is caught in the middle of the duel, trying so desperately to hold
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