Few directors out there can capture cruelty on-screen quite like Ridley Scott. His best films are always blunt-force shocks to the system, as muscular and visceral as they are unforgiving. But Scott’s affinity for violence is just one small part of the fire that fuels The Last Duel, a medieval epic that injects chilling nihilism into a proto-feminist tale.
The 2021 film is easily one of Scott’s best: as carefully plotted as it is aggressive. But it’s also, for some reason, one of the director’s most underrated. When it premiered at the Venice Film Festival, it caught some flack for centering its two male stars instead of its parallels to the #MeToo movement. As the stars in question were Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who also co-wrote the script alongside Nicole Holofcener, that sort of scene-stealing might just come with the territory.
