I’ve been meaning to watch Luc Besson’s Le Dernier Combat for years, but had just never gotten around to trying to hunt it down.  It’s been on my Netflix queue forever, with a DVD release date of “Unknown”, so I guess I expected it to turn up sooner or later.  But after watching District B13 last night and coming across Le Dernier Combat again while browsing Besson’s filmography, I decided to just go ahead and download it off the torrents.  It came down pretty quick, and was waiting for me when I got home from work today.

It’s funny that while I was donwloading it, I was hoping I was getting the English version, because I didn’t realize that it wouldn’t matter; there’s no spoken dialog in the film at all.  It’s not just that the characters don’t feel like talking, they’re all physically unable to for some reason.

The movie takes place an unspecified time after an unspecified apocalypse.  Some cities are completely covered in sand dunes, and some are clear, but mostly destroyed.  You see about 10 people total, though the move really centers around only three, The Man, The Doctor and The Brute.  I suppose it’s kind of an arthousey post-apocalyptic movie, slightly humorous in an old-fashioned silent movie kind of way with serious themes.

All in all, I enjoyed it.  The lack of dialog made it feel a little slow at times, but you could always tell what was going on, or what the characters were thinking.  With the number of awesome movies Luc Besson has been involved it, it’s cool that his very first feature film was raw post-apocalyptic.  And how many PA movies are there with chase-scene music straight out of an episode of CHiPs?

If you’re a PA fan and you haven’t seen it yet, go find it; it’s worthwhile.