Movies are good this year!

Quite an accomplished tap dance Scott and the writers have got going on here. I was worried it would be too tongue in cheek, but it largely takes the material seriously, just with a bit of a playful edge.

It pulls from Rashomon, as have many other films, but uses it to great effect. Instead of having the three chapters differ via character action, they’re differentiated by character performance. It’s not exactly subtle, but it’s an atypical take on a familiar formula and entertaining to follow as a viewer. I’d love to know how they approached developing this structure. Were all the minute differences planned in the script? Or did they evolve out of rehearsals?

I love pre-19th-century-set films when the cast and production are fully committed to bringing the period to life, and for the most part, that is the case with The Last Duel. One of the great things about setting a movie that far in the past is that it grants easy access to higher stakes—death and harsh punitive measures were an everyday part of life. Unfortunately, often some form of plot armor restricts the peril of the time period from being fully realized on screen, especially on TV (Outlander, for instance, has this problem with its main duo; it makes up for that issue by extensively developing side characters before killing them off).

On the other hand, I had absolutely no idea who would survive this movie. We’ve got 2+ hours of tangling these characters in a knot before it all implodes in an unforeseeable conclusion—in some ways, what every film should be.

Hopefully this is successful. I’d love to see more medieval dramas.

Rating: 4/5

Edit: Just read it opened at number five… my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined. Are movies for grown-ups dead?