Film

The Last Duel

Name: The Last Duel
Genre: Drama, History, Thriller
Released: 2021
Cast: Matt Damon, Adam Driver, Jodie Comer, Ben Affleck, Harriet Walter

Ridley Scott splits one accusation into three testimonies — his, his, hers — replaying the same assault and its aftermath through ego, self-delusion, and finally clarity. It's mud, chainmail, and courtly cruelty staged as tragedy, building to a brutal armored duel. Gripping rather than fun, and Jodie Comer's chapter lands like a gut-punch. For anyone who wants history that argues with itself.

TMDb rating

7.4

If you liked this

Gladiator2000

Same director, same appetite for grime and grandeur — Scott's Roman epic gives you honor, betrayal, and combat with the same weight and craft, minus the structural gimmick.

But It's a simpler story with a clear hero, so if you loved the moral murkiness here, this will feel comparatively straightforward.

Braveheart1995

Medieval Europe at its most brutal and beautiful, with the same interest in honor codes turning men into weapons and women into collateral damage.

But Gibson's politics haven't aged well and the history is looser than Scott's — this is myth-making, not reconstruction.

The Favourite2018

Court intrigue told through competing, contradictory viewpoints, but swapped for vicious wit and three women running rings around powerful men.

But Lanthimos's arch, theatrical style is a world away from Scott's mud-and-steel realism — expect comedy, not tragedy.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Rashomon1950

The Last Duel borrows Rashomon's entire structural DNA — competing testimonies of the same act — right down to the way certainty erodes with each retelling.

The film that invented this whole trick — one crime, four irreconcilable accounts, and the quiet devastation of realizing nobody's telling the whole truth, including themselves.

But It's 88 minutes of subtitled black-and-white Japanese cinema from 1950 — a real shift in pace and texture if you're used to modern blockbusters.

Kingdom of Heaven2005

Scott's other medieval epic, and the director's cut is a genuinely underrated meditation on faith, violence, and trying to act well inside a corrupt system.

But The theatrical cut is a mess — you need the three-hour director's cut, and even then it's a slower, more meditative watch.

Elizabeth1998

Tudor court politics where a woman's body and reputation become the battlefield men fight over, filmed with the same cold, ornate menace.

But It's more interested in political survival than sexual violence specifically, so the parallel is thematic rather than exact.

A Knight's Tale2001

Same jousting, armor, and class anxiety, but played as a rowdy underdog comedy with a Queen soundtrack — a genuine palate cleanser.

But If you want another serious historical reckoning, this anachronistic crowd-pleaser will feel like whiplash.

Promising Young Woman2020

Takes the same question — who gets believed, and why — and drags it into a modern, candy-colored revenge thriller with real teeth.

But Its tonal swings between dark comedy and horror are polarizing, and the ending divides people sharply.

The Assistant2020

A quiet, procedural look at how institutions protect powerful men, told through one exhausting day rather than one dramatic trial.

But It's deliberately undramatic — no duel, no confrontation, just accumulating dread. Some find it inert rather than tense.

Wolf Hall2015

A court where power is exercised through whispers rather than swords, and truth about who did what to whom is always contested and dangerous.

But It's a slow-burn miniseries built on political maneuvering, not violence — a very different rhythm to Scott's film.

The Duellists1977

Same director, same fixation on duels as a stupid, honor-bound machine that consumes the men inside it — Scott rehearsing this exact theme forty years early.

Ridley Scott's directorial debut, about two Napoleonic officers whose grudge escalates into a decades-long string of duels — obsessive, gorgeous, and eerily prophetic of the film you just watched.

But It's slower and more interior, more interested in male vanity as a slow poison than in any single explosive climax.

Anatomy of a Fall2023

Both films refuse to give you an objective camera — you assemble the truth about a marriage and an act of violence entirely from conflicting testimony, and the ambiguity is the point.

A modern French courtroom drama that strips away the medieval trappings and asks the same question in a kitchen instead of a battlefield: whose version of a relationship do we believe?

But It's cool and clinical where The Last Duel is operatic — a chamber piece with subtitles, not a spectacle.