Hang in there for the gripping final half an hour: The Last Duel reviewed

Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel is set in the 14th century and is a tale of rivalry and rape told from three points of view, when two would probably have been sufficient. The best is saved to last, perhaps unforgivably. It’s the woman’s story, starring Jodie Comer who is sensational, so do hang on in there for that. However, I can’t guarantee that you won’t have severe battle-scene fatigue by then.

Based on true events and, loosely, on the book by Eric Jager, it stars Adam Driver (trying hard not to sound American and sometimes failing) as the nobleman Jacques Le Gris and a strangely mulleted Matt Damon (also trying hard not to sound American and sometimes failing) as fellow nobleman Jean de Carrouges. The two are friends at the outset, with a closeness that’s been cemented on the battlefields. (This is set during the Hundred Years’ War.) But when Le Gris is taken up by Count Pierre d’Alençon (Ben Affleck) and De Carrouges discovers, on his marriage to Marguerite de Thibouville (Comer), that the Count has taken the land promised as her dowry and awarded it to Le Gris, the two fall out, rather badly. Later, when Marguerite reports to her husband that Le Gris has raped her, bridges are, understandably, not built.

It opens with the titular last duel where the two men, who are being dressed in their armour, will have to fight to the death. (If De Carrouges survives, Marguerite was telling the truth, and if he doesn’t, she wasn’t, and she will be burned at the stake. God will decide. God held a lot of sway back then.)We then spool to a few years earlier when the men are comrades-in-arms on the battlefield at Limoges and De Carrouges saves Le Gris’s life.