Le Dernier combat (1983)
Directed by Luc Besson

Film Review

Luc Besson's first full-length film is this extraordinarily bizarre yet stunningly realised post-apocalyptic drama which demands at least three viewings to make sense of it.  Filmed in black and white with just two lines of dialogue, Le Dernier combat appears quite different to Besson's later films (for one thing, it is far more tongue-in-cheek), yet it amply demonstrates the young director's talent and his preoccupation with visual style.  It earned Besson a brace of awards and launched his very successful film-making career.

The film is a re-working of a short film which Besson made a few years earlier (L'Avant dernier).  A puzzling yet compelling work, it offers a strangely powerful study of human nature.  The lack of dialogue allows the spectator to draw his own conclusions (and to some extent make up his or her own film), something which adds greatly to the film's appeal.  Some brilliant comic touches lift the film in just the right places and there is a humanity which is curiously lacking in Besson's subsequent films.

The main character in the film is played by Pierre Jolivet, a personal friend of Besson who would later pursue a promising film-making career himself  (creating such works as the baffling sci-fi thiller Simple mortel.)  Jean Reno also stars in the film, long before he became an international cult figure.  Here, he plays (not surprisingly) the villainous hard-man of the piece, a psychopathic killer whose thwarted attempts to carry out his job make him far more endearing than frightening.

Film Synopsis

The earth lies in ruins.  In the aftermath of some global catastrophe, most of the world's population has been wiped out.  All that remains are a few sorry remnants of humanity scattered around the planet, scavenging like wild animals among the shattered remains of a destroyed civilisation.  Living in a graveyard of abandoned motorcars is one such gang of marauders, murderous savages who have lost the power of speech.  Seeing a stranger about to take his leave of this dismal wasteland in an aircraft he has constructed they go chasing after him, but he manages to take off just in time.

The pilot lands in what used to be one of the world's great metropolises, Paris.  Now the city is reduced to rubble, with no sign of survivors anywhere - apart from a huge bearded brute who fiercely attacks the aviator.  Wounded, the latter is saved by a doctor, who takes him to the safety of his underground lair, all that remains of his hospital.  Here, the pilot is surprised to find a young woman being held a prisoner -  the only woman he has seen since the catastrophe.  As debris rains down on him, the kindly doctor is killed, and the aviator is once again at war with the bearded giant for what will be the last battle...