---
title: "The Last Battle"
year: 1983
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-last-battle"
fi1m_id: "the-last-battle"
imdb_id: "tt0085426"
tmdb_id: 19184
wikidata_id: "Q386210"
fi1m_score: 74
critics_reviews: 2
published: "2026-09-26T01:07:28.818595+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-26T01:07:38.358950+00:00"
region: "PA"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# The Last Battle (1983)

Directed by Luc Besson · 1h 30m · Science Fiction

## Identity

The Last Battle

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/the-last-battle
- **Type:** Film
- **Fi1m ID:** the-last-battle
- **IMDb ID:** tt0085426
- **TMDB ID:** 19184
- **Wikidata ID:** Q386210
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085426/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/19184, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q386210

**Fi1m score: 74** · Critics: 2 of 6 reviews so far

*In a sentence:* The world has ended and nobody has a word to say about it, which turns out to be the joke

> Luc Besson’s first feature is a post-apocalypse film in black and white with no dialogue at all, and it is far better than that sentence sounds. Small, dry and oddly tender, it runs out of story before it runs out of minutes.

## Synopsis

In a city reduced to rubble and sand, some years after a catastrophe the film never explains, a man known only as The Man (Pierre Jolivet) lives alone in the shell of an office block, building a small aeroplane out of scavenged parts. Nobody speaks. Nobody can. Out in the desert, a gang led by a Captain (Fritz Wepper) guards its salvage, keeps a woman (Christiane Krüger) as property and kills anyone who wanders close. The Man needs the last parts to get his machine airborne, and the gang has them. When he flies, he lands in a wrecked city where a doctor (Jean Bouise) has walled himself inside a hospital, and where a scavenger, The Brute (Jean Reno), spends every day trying to batter down the door.

## Review

Luc Besson’s first feature is a science fiction film about the end of the world, shot in black and white and with no dialogue. That is a description, not a warning. *The Last Battle* is a small, strange, frequently funny 90 minutes that does more with a wrecked office and three men than most films of its kind manage with a fleet of cars. It is worth your evening if you have any patience for silence.

The idea, written by Besson with his lead, Pierre Jolivet, is that whatever finished civilisation also finished speech. Nobody explains this. Nobody can, which is the point, and the film simply has its people grunt, point, nod and hit each other. It took us about five minutes to stop noticing. What is left when the talking goes is behaviour: how a man makes a bed in a ruin, how he lays a table, how he decides whether the stranger at the door is a threat.

Carlo Varini shoots it in black and white, and the choice earns its keep. The desert is a flat white sheet and the ruins are hard grey blocks against it, and when the Man’s home-made aeroplane lifts off it looks like a small machine over a great deal of emptiness. Thierry Flamand and Christian Grosrichard fill an abandoned office with sand up to the desk drawers and turn the Doctor’s hospital into a fortress of welded doors and stacked furniture, all of it looking found rather than built. Marie Beau and Martine Rapin dress the men in what a man might actually dig out of the rubble: scarves, mismatched boots, the Brute in what appears to be bits of a car.

Éric Serra’s score is the one element that dates. It is early-eighties synthesiser through and through, thin and insistent, and it fills a silence the film had been managing well on its own. In the quieter passages it settles into a low hum under the wind. Sophie Schmit cuts without hurry, letting a scene of a man eating, or waiting, run to the length it needs.

Jolivet plays the Man as a dogged, unremarkable person who keeps going, and that ordinariness is the right choice; a hero would have been a bore. Jean Bouise is the film’s heart. His Doctor is courteous in a world that has no use for courtesy, and there is a passage in the middle where he shares his food, his shelter and his one remaining pleasure with a stranger, and we were moved by it more than we had any reason to expect. It is a scene about manners, which is what is left once everything else has gone. Jean Reno is the Brute, and he is mostly a body: enormous, patient, hammering at a door day after day. He is funnier than the part has any right to be, and a little frightening.

We laughed, too, and early. The opening minutes, which involve the Man and an inflatable companion in the wreckage, set the tone at once, and there is a later shower of fish we still cannot quite account for. The humour is deadpan and a little student-ish, and now and then a gag is held a beat past its life. The bigger fault is shape. A man, a doctor and a monster is about enough story for an hour; the last third repeats itself, the Brute batters the door again, and we caught ourselves waiting. The film’s women, one kept as a concubine and one locked in a cell, are treated as prizes by its men and not much argued with by its makers, which sat less easily with us than it seems to have with the film.

Set against [*Mad Max*](https://film.one/film/mad-max), which it will inevitably be, this is the opposite approach: no petrol, no speed, no leather, just three people and a lot of dust. Set against Besson’s later career it is the quietest thing he made and arguably the most disciplined. Watch it at night, with the lights off and nobody talking, which for once will not be a problem for the subtitles. There are none to read.

*Fi1m score 74, published 26 September 2026.*

## Straight answers

**Is The Last Battle worth watching?**

*The Last Battle* is worth watching for anyone with patience for a black-and-white science fiction film with no dialogue at all, and we scored it 74. Luc Besson's first feature is small, dry and oddly tender, funnier than it sounds, and does a great deal with a wrecked office and three men. It runs out of story before it runs out of minutes, so expect the last third to repeat itself.

**How long is The Last Battle, and what is it rated?**

*The Last Battle* runs 1h 30m. It is a science fiction film.

**Where can I watch The Last Battle in Panama?**

*The Last Battle* is not on any streaming or rental service in Panama at the moment. It is available in 3 other countries; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily.

**How violent or frightening is The Last Battle, and is it suitable for children?**

*The Last Battle* carries a UK 15 certificate and is not suitable for children. The violence is blunt rather than gory, but men are killed for wandering too close, a woman is kept as property by a gang, and Jean Reno's Brute is a little frightening. Teenagers of 15 and over with a taste for the strange should manage it.

**How does The Last Battle compare to Stalker?**

*The Last Battle* and [*Stalker*](https://film.one/film/stalker) are opposite kinds of post-apocalypse film: Besson's has no dialogue at all, while Tarkovsky's is full of philosophical talk that sometimes grows heavy. *Stalker* is the deeper and more rewarding film, and the one we recommend more warmly, but it asks for close attention. *The Last Battle* is the lighter evening, dry and funny, and the better choice for anyone who found Tarkovsky too talkative.

**What should I watch after The Last Battle?**

After *The Last Battle*, try [*The Quiet Earth*](https://film.one/film/the-quiet-earth) (1985, Fi1m 78): A man wakes to an empty New Zealand and slowly loses his composure. Then [*Stalker*](https://film.one/film/stalker) (1979, Fi1m 86): Tarkovsky’s ruined zone, for those who found this too talkative; and [*Delicatessen*](https://film.one/film/delicatessen) (1991, Fi1m 83): French post-apocalypse played for grim laughs, with a butcher instead of a Brute.

### Reviews we read (2)

- **Radio Times**, Alan Jones (4/5): The critic calls the film a remarkable achievement and a stark alternative to Mad Max. He praises its carefully orchestrated black-and-white visuals and wordless storytelling. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-nxoxik/the-last-battle/)
- **Time Out**, GD (64/100, inferred): The available metadata does not reveal the critic’s overall verdict. It singles out the film’s grim, wordless post-holocaust humour and Besson’s connection to Claude Faraldo. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-last-battle)

## Details

- **Director:** Luc Besson
- **Director:** Luc Besson
- **Writer:** Pierre Jolivet, Luc Besson
- **Cinematography:** Carlo Varini
- **Editor:** Sophie Schmit
- **Music:** Éric Serra
- **Production design:** Thierry Flamand, Christian Grosrichard
- **Costume design:** Martine Rapin, Marie Beau
- **Producer:** Pierre Jolivet, Luc Besson
- **Cast:** Pierre Jolivet as The Man; Jean Bouise as The Doctor; Fritz Wepper as Captain; Jean Reno as The Brute; Christiane Krüger as Captain's Concubine; Maurice Lamy as Dwarf; Pierre Carrive as Captain's Man; Jean-Michel Castanié as Captain's Man
- **Runtime:** 1h 30m
- **First release (Germany):** 6 April 1983
- **Genres:** Science Fiction
- **Budget:** $4 million
- **Box office:** $2 million

## Where to watch in Panama

Not streaming, renting or buying in Panama at the last check.

Also available in: BE, FR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## Awards

- Sitges Film Festival Best Director award 1983: Sitges Film Festival Best Director award (won)
- Sitges Film Festival Best Feature-Length Film award 1983: Sitges Film Festival Best Feature-Length Film award (won)

## If you liked this

- *Themroc* (1973): Claude Faraldo’s grunting anti-language comedy; the obvious ancestor, and angrier.
- *The Quiet Earth* (1985), Fi1m 78: A man wakes to an empty New Zealand and slowly loses his composure. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-quiet-earth.md)
- *Stalker* (1979), Fi1m 86: Tarkovsky’s ruined zone, for those who found this too talkative. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/stalker.md)
- *Delicatessen* (1991), Fi1m 83: French post-apocalypse played for grim laughs, with a butcher instead of a Brute. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/delicatessen.md)
- *A Boy and His Dog* (1975): Scrappy American wasteland comedy with a nastier streak than Besson’s.

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-last-battle