Review: Ridley Scott's epic 'The Last Duel' rebukes the patriarchy in every era

Toward the end of Ridley Scott's "The Last Duel," an epic evisceration of bad men and worse hair, a court official argues that a woman must experience sexual pleasure in order to conceive a child. "A rape," he concludes, "cannot cause a pregnancy." That's your cue to scoff at the dire intellects of 14th century France, but it may also remind you of some of the comparably idiotic things that male politicians have uttered in our ostensibly more enlightened times. I doubt I'll be the only viewer to flash back on the career-ending words of the former Missouri congressman Todd Akin, who in 2012 declared that the female body has ways of shutting down pregnancies in cases of "legitimate rape."

Those words resurfaced in the wake of Akin's death