The Last Duel, co-written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck and directed by Ridley Scott, is a redundant hybrid of two premises that were done much earlier and much better by Akira Kurosawa and, curiously, Scott himself.
Perhaps the filmmaker’s intention was to filter his own The Duellists through Rashomon, but the result is anything but Kurosawa-esque; while in the economic Japanese film there were three contradictory versions of the same incident, here we get we three reiterative accounts — consequently, the predictable, repetitive, interminable plot lacks any and all ambiguity or suspense. What’s the point of these overlapping stories? Consider this: the antagonist never fails to come across as anything other than a lying sack of shit from all points of view — including his own!
Scott’s legacy is as well-cemented as his oeuvre is spotty, and this self-complacent movie is closer to Robin Hood or Kingdom of Heaven than to Body of Lies or All the Money in the World (neither of which are in the same league as Alien or Blade Runner, but then which film is?).
It’s a shame, because this could have been an exciting tale if only it were told in a straightforward manner, without wasting so much precious time going around in circles. Aside from the French who speak English at all times (except when they sing), and the “based on true events” which guarantees that virtually everything we’re about to see never ever happened other than in Affleck’s and Damon’s fertile imaginations (usually put to better use), The Last Duel musters a healthy level of authenticity — all of which only makes it all the more disappointing that Scott, who in The Duellists made a visual reference to Franz Josef Sandmann’s “Napoleon in Saint Helena” that was all the more effective because the painting was recreated with spectacular real locations, resorts here to shots that seem to be taken directly from Age of Empires.
Damon, as Jean de Carrouges, acquits himself best of all from this clusterfuck. Adam Driver demonstrates once again that he should stick to everyman characters; übermenschen like Jacques Le Gris or Kylo Ren are well beyond his limited range. And Affleck, as Count Pierre d’Alençon, approaches the character as if he were back in Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season — but I don’t entirely blame him; perhaps out of modesty he refrained from pointing it out, but Scott and Damon should have known that since Damon is Carrouges, his Le Gris nemesis should automatically be played by Affleck; then at least we would have had Good Will Hunting 3 (“how do you like them medieval apples?”).
90% of Everything is Crap 