This review of “The Last Duel” was first published after the film’s premiere at September’s Venice Film Festival.
If you examine Ridley Scott’s filmography, the 83-year-old director has never made the same film twice: Following his breakout with the peerlessly suspenseful sci-fi thriller “Alien,” he traded aliens for alienation in “Blade Runner,” followed by explorations of myriad genres in films like “Thelma & Louise,” “Hannibal,” “Robin Hood,” and “The Martian.”
The whodunit makes it into his filmography with “The Last Duel”: Adapting Eric Jager’s 2004 nonfiction book with screenwriters Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Nicole Holofcener, Scott spins a medieval yarn that is by turns gruesome, grotesque, gorgeous, and inconsistent.