The Last Duel

18 Cert, 152 min

★★★★★

Dir Ridley Scott

Starring Matt Damon, Adam Driver, Jodie Comer, Ben Affleck

By Robbie Collin

In 14th-century France, two men stand in an arena, clad in armour and walled in by a thundering crowd. The first, an oafish Norman noble called Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon), has accused the second, his longstanding rival Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver), of having raped his wife. And while Le Gris concedes the encounter took place, he insists both parties were willing participants.

Of course in these he-said, she-said situations, it’s impossible to know who to believe: the notoriously louche, philandering squire with friends in high places, or the woman who stands to be burned at the stake if it’s decided she lied. (Played by Jodie Comer, her name is Marguerite.) So the dispute has been put into God’s hands. Carrouges and Le Gris will fight to the death in a so-called trial by combat, through which fate will determine who was telling the truth.

Who else but Scott has the required vision and nerve, never mind the resources, to keep making films like this these days? The Last Duel, which was adapted from a non-fiction book by Eric Jager, is a knotty, stimulating drama with a piquant Metoo edge and the heft and splendour of an old-school historical epic.

But its plot is built on a far smaller scale than, say, Gladiator, or Kingdom of Heaven. Taking a structural cue from the 1950 Kurosawa classic Rashomon, the script by Damon, Ben Affleck and Nicole Holofcener approaches the same sequence of events leading up to the duel itself from three contrasting, and sometimes clashing, perspectives.

The first is that of Carrouges, and is as blunt and brisk as the man himself. The second, which belongs to Le Gris, fleshes out the detail. And the third is Marguerite’s own, which subtly but surely turns your understanding of the first two on its head.

Both Driver and Damon ably embody their characters’ very different strains of alpha-male brittleness. And Comer is quietly tremendous as the woman trapped in the middle of their feud. Every mechanism in the society into which she’s been born is working against her, and she makes you feel every last crunch of its gears. As for the climactic clash itself, it’s one for the already swollen Scott showreel.

In cinemas from today