Even though there are times when The Last Duel seems to be teetering on the edge of parody — one almost expects Blackadder to be hatching cunning plans with Baldrick, this latest from the 83-year-old Ridley Scott is engaging and lovely to look at to boot. Based on Eric Jager’s non-fiction book on the last official judicial duel, The Last …
Ridley Scott’s medieval #MeToo drama The Last Duel opens big as it sets the stage for a 1386 duel to the death between two armored combatants on horseback. Just as the first blow is about to be struck, the story cuts to 26 years earlier, when the two combatants, the knight Jean de Carrouges and the squire Jacques Le Gris …
On its mud-and-blood surface, “The Last Duel” seems like a familiar slog. “The Last Duel” is more like a medieval tale deconstructed, piece by piece, until its heavily armored male characters and the genre’s mythologized nobility are unmasked. Damon and Affleck, who last together scripted their breakout, “Good Will Hunting,” have said they wrote the first two sections, and handed …
