Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel is a 2.5 hour epic that pits the Goodwill Hunting co-writers (Matt Damon and Ben Affleck) against one another, with Adam Driver and Jodie Comer sandwiched in between the two middle-aged Bostonians. This 14th century tale details the issues of property taxes, rape allegations, intercontinental battles, and marital woes. Before I give away too much information regarding the plot and character details, I’d like to say one thing…
I strongly encourage you, dear reader, to go to a movie theater, buy some popcorn, and watch this movie. It’s one of the last original stories that we have left, it's underperformed at the box office some reason or another, but it’s a damned good story to sit down and meditate on for 2.5 hours of your life.
There aren’t as many action sequences as a Bond film, and there isn’t an overarching story that spans across 25 movies like Avengers: Endgame, but it does feature superstar talents putting on superstar performances with a genius of a director behind the candle-lit curtain. It’s like medieval Succession with even more blatant misogyny and sexual harassment, except it features four of the most valuable actors in America today.
Adam Driver's Jacques is petrifying and dashing, Matt Damon's Jean is frustratingly arrogant and rocking the worst hairdo since the late 1380s, Ben Affleck's Pierre is bleached and über horny as he participates in several orgies, and Jodie Comer proves to be the next Angelina Jolie except she has much more soul and bravado to her.
The film employs a genius storytelling strategy that utilizes three different perspectives to move the story forward, opposed to following the ancient law of telling a story in three acts. Sure, there are three acts to be had in this story, but the three separate ways in which they’re told is what differentiates this from its period piece peers.
SPOILER WARNING: CERTAIN PLOT POINTS AND MOTIVATIONS ARE DISCUSSED AHEAD
The first chapter is told from the point-of-view of Matt Damon’s Jean de Carrouges. We’ll just refer to him as The Dumb One from now on, because although Jean doesn’t lead us to believe that he’s the dumb one out of the four main characters, the other two perspectives lean differently. He's dumb. His hair is really fucking dumb. And pretty much everybody thinks he's dumb.
The Dumb One is a squire to King Charles VI, if my memory serves me correctly, and he’s evolving into a knight who is set to take over his father’s castle and all of the fiscal responsibilities that come along with it. He leads us to believe through his chapter of the storytelling, that he’s a valued warrior who saved Adam Driver’s Jacques ale Gris’s life in battle. Jacques tells us a different story when it’s his turn to entertain us campfire crowders. We never find out which story is reality, and which one is a figment of the other’s vanity.
Nevertheless, The Dumb One’s primary responsibility is to find a healthy, charming young woman and conceive an heir, so his family name may live on. This is when the stunning Jodie Comer approaches as Marguerite, an innocent young woman who also belongs to a family with a castle under their stewardship. She’s both well-read and drop-dead gorgeous, an ideal suitor for any half-drunken sword carrier. They fall in love in an instant, according to The Dumb One.
Marguerite is clearly out of his league. She speaks Latin and reads novels at a rapid pace, while The Dumb One is practically illiterate and has more scar tissue on his body than Marguerite does hair follicles on hers. He’s lucky to have her in his graces, but doesn’t fondle the opportunity like he should, which Jacques notices. Jacques is the one who falls in love, or becomes enraptured with a deep lust, with Marguerite at first sight.
It’s an effect that Comer had on me during this movie as well, I really couldn’t blame Jacques for falling for his so-called-friend’s new wife. But the actions that he takes from there on out are what make his character really condemning and horrifying. This is where the forbidden love triangle begins, and Affleck’s Pierre is in the background for the majority of the movie, dangling little gifts and large pieces of land around just to stir things up. To review the rest of the plot’s summary would be a tall task, so I’ll just leave this here and encourage you once again to revisit this film. For it is a beautiful addition to Ridley Scott’s filmography, and a genuine accomplishment in filmmaking.
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