Le Dernier Combat

French director Luc Besson's (La Femme Nikita, The Fifth Element, The Messenger) 1983 debut effort, this dialogue-less, quasi sci-fi, Road Warrior-inspired post-apocalyptic tale stars Pierre Jolivet as an Everyman struggling for survival. An itinerant scavenger forced to migrate by roving bands of thugs, Jolivet eventually finds shelter with an odd scholar who's built a good bunker to keep out intruders (particularly Jean Reno, whose childlike attempts at strategy-based attacks are one of the film's highlights. While Le Dernier Combat (which translates as The Last Battle) sports moments of oddball black humor (a diminutive human mole kept in the trunk of a car is periodically dropped into a subterranean hole to refill water canteens) and wonderful battle sequences between Jolivet and Reno, this wordless parable about basic instincts, realpolitik and lost paradises is ultimately too slow and too obvious to have wide appeal. An optional purchase. (R. Pitman)