The action is good, period details are excellent but the movie characters are underdeveloped. There is no ambivalence in them. Ridley Scott freely borrowed cinematic stuff from Alaine Resnais--repeated shots of the same scene to enhance realism, and used the template of the "Return of Martin Guerre".
I am sure that his characters were such in real life: J. de Carrouge was a dependable but tempestuous and semi-literate boor, his wife--a wronged woman, LeGris--a social climber devoid of any scruples and Count d'Alencon--a scheming Renaissance prince straight from Machiavelli--enlightened but ruthless and immoral. But this does not make a movie interesting. I would wish a conscious retreat from the historical chronicles--that LeGris was really madly in love, that Marguerite was torn between her true feelings and conjugal duty, and that the Last Duel was essentially a glorified suicide of LeGris to save the honor of his beloved, even at the cost of his own soul--not a trivial consideration for the Middle Ages.
