The Last Duel Trailer Debuts Starring Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jodie Comer, and Adam Driver

 



Matt Damon and Adam Driver face off against each other in a duel to the death in the trailer for Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel. Directed by Scott (The Martian), The Last Duel follows Matt Damon and Adam Driver as characters living in medieval times who become locked in a duel together after Driver’s character Jacques Le Gris attacks the wife of Matt Damon’s character Jean de Carrouges. Jean’s wife, Marguerite (Jodie Comer) refuses to stay silent against her attacker who denies the accusations even though her life is put on the line for what she is saying. 

 


 

 


 

The action takes place during the Hundred Years War, the trailer looks incredibly visceral with the conflict between Damon and Driver feeling dangerous and deadly. Ben Affleck reunites on the big screen with Matt Damon in this picture but in a very untraditional role for him as he plays Count Pierre d’Alencon surprisingly sporting a blonde hairstyle. The scope seems to imply warring factions and intrigue surrounding the very personal fight between the central characters and Driver comes off great as the antagonist in this first look at the film. 

 



 

Ridley Scott and Matt Damon proved themselves to have a good working relationship with their work on The Martian (2015), so to see them reteam here is exciting to see and a promising prospect. The trailer hones in on Jodie Comer’s performance of Matt Damon’s wife with her character being tested by her conviction and willingness to tell the truth even in the face of death. This historical drama reminds me of the Jamie Bell-led series Turn which dealt with spies during the Revolutionary War in that both dealt with gripping true-story based events that are told through the parameters of morally conflicted characters and brought to life by dynamic talents with Damon, Affleck, Driver, and Comer being the true driving forces of this forthcoming cinematic journey captained by Scott. 

 


 

And speaking to the creative ambition behind the camera on this picture Variety reports that the screenplay is written by Nicole Holofcener, Affleck, and Damon, with the movie being based on actual events, unraveling the long-held assumptions about what happened between the two men. Ridley Scott’s film adapts the book by Eric Jager, “The Last Duel: A True Story of Crime, Scandal, and Trial by Combat in Medieval France.” 

 


 

“This film is an effort to retell the story of a heroic woman from history whom most people haven’t heard of,” says Holofcener, Affleck and Damon. “We admired her bravery and resolute determination and felt this was both a story that needed to be told and one whose drama would captivate audiences the way it moved us as writers.”

“As we further explored the story, we found so many aspects of the formal, codified patriarchy of 14th century Western Europe to still be present in vestigial ways (and in some cases almost unchanged) in today’s society,” the trio continued. We chose to use the device of telling the story from several character’s perspectives in order to examine the immutable fact that although often multiple people who experience the same event come away with differing accounts, there can only be one truth.”

 


 

All in all The Last Duel’s first trailer is a gripping and captivating one that makes me look forward to the creative effort between herculean talents such as Ridley Scott, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Adam Driver, and Jodie Comer. I’m unfamiliar with Jodie Comer’s work but she comes off as an actress who has the capability to command the screen and really hold your attention in the best way possible. That alongside the ominous villainous presence of Driver and the reunion of Affleck and Damon onscreen and the direction by Ridley Scott has certainly caught my interest in seeing this film when it arrives in theaters October 15th.


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