This article first appeared in the March 2022 digital edition of Equestrian Life. To see what’s in the current issue, click here.
Adam Driver and Matt Damon starred in ‘The Last Duel’.
© Lifestyle pictures / Alamy Stock Photo
The Last Duel, lost in translation?
By Suzy Jarratt
It is one of the biggest commercial flops in director Ridley Scott’s career and he blames it on millennials “who don’t want to be taught anything unless it’s on a cell phone”. But he has no regrets about making The Last Duel (2021), a mediaeval tale of betrayal and vengeance.
Matt Damon, as Jean de Carrouges, plays a knight who challenges his former friend Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver) to a duel after his wife Marguerite (Jodie Comer) accused Jacques of raping her.
The film lasts almost two hours – it seems so much longer.
One of the memorable aspects of Scott’s 26th feature are the hairstyles. Matt Damon sports a mullet and closely resembles the lead singer of Metallica. Comer’s Princess Leia-bangs are eye-catching and Ben Affleck, who plays a count, has a platinum-dyed Caesar cut. Driver, however, just has simple shoulder-length locks which frame his long, gloomy face. He spends much of the film resembling a melancholy undertaker.
But he does look okay on the back of a horse, as does Damon who, over the last 20 years, has ridden in films such as All the Pretty Horses, True Grit and The Great Wall, where he was a mounted archer no less.
The Last Duel was made in France and Ireland using horses sourced from these two countries, together with hundreds of extras and stuntmen. There appeared to be even more up on the screen in the final edit due to the extensive use of CGI (computer generated images)…
