The Last Battle

The sky is raining fish. Skyscrapers sit in mountains of sand. Bandits sleep in trunks of used cars. It's a world of the future. A world called Planet Earth. And he's one man just trying to survive.

In Besson’s haunting, beautifully realised vision of a post-apocalyptic world, few have held onto life, and fewer still to humanity. An unknown trauma has robbed mankind of their ability to speak, and they remain, mute, in the unexplained wreckage of what once was.

"The Man" [Pierre Jolivet] is an isolated survivor wandering the hostile streets of a collapsed civilization. He lives in a long-abandoned office building, fighting off attacks from nearby thugs and gathering together disused car parts for a makeshift airplane, hoping to fly away from his sombre prison.

Escape, however, offers little respite, as he leaves one dead city for another. In the midst of this new wasteland, "The Man" encounters his nemesis, "The Brute" [Jean Reno]; a violent aggressor who becomes determined to destroy him. By chance he stumbles into a derelict hospital, and finds there an old doctor who is hiding from The Brute. Together, the two seek sanctuary from The Brute, and gradually, in the grey and sterile world, a friendship begins to grow.

Luc Besson's debut feature film, The Last Battle has been much lauded by audiences and critics alike since its release in 1984 and enjoys a richly deserved cult status in the annuls of film history.