It’s nice to see Guillermo del Toro giving his stamp of approval to Ridley Scott’s already under-appreciated “The Last Duel.” I still stand by my belief that if enough Oscar voters watch this movie then Ben Affleck, Jodie Comer and the film itself have a chance at getting nominated.
The film is, sadly, a box-office bomb having amassed only $11.3 million domestically on a $100 million budget. On Rotten Tomatoes it has an 85% fresh score and a subpar 67 on Metacritic. The experts over at Gold Derby have it ranked 20th amongst the Best Picture Oscar contenders. I have it ranked 10th.
”The Last Duel” is one of the better Ridley Scott movies since his 2000 Oscar-winner “Gladiator.” His best movies since then have been “Black Hawk Down,” “Matchstick Men,” “Kingdom of Heaven (director’s cut) “American Gangster,” “Prometheus” and now “The Last Duel.”
Why am I supporting this movie so damn much? My allegiance to ‘Duel’ isn’t all-out praise (I gave it B/B+), it also stems from these kind of old-fashioned epics being a dying breed in Hollywood. The fact that it isn’t doing well either at the box-office only reinforces the inevitable extinction of the genre.