Napoleon [2023]

October 22, 2024

I feel like Ridley Scott has always been a part of my life. After all, I’ve been watching his movies for as long as I’ve been alive and they are some of my favorite ones. So, I was pretty excited to check out his latest historic epic despite some early warning signs. First of all, Napoleon is a movie featuring a running time of two and a half hours. And you kind of have to watch it in one go. I’ve waited for a couple of weeks and then, last night, I finally hit that play button. Now, before I go any further, you should know that this two-and-a-half-hour version of the movie is the theatrical cut.

Ridley Scott plans to release another version, a director’s cut, that’s going to be over four hours long on the Apple TV+ streaming service. As of October 2024, that version is still unavailable and there is no news about its potential release date. I’m sincerely hoping that we will get a much better movie than because this version of the movie is just average. Still worth watching but when you look at the good and the bad, still average. After a promising opening twenty minutes, Napoleon started becoming increasingly disjointed and casual. You can see right away that they’ve bitten off more than they can chew.

And by they I mean Ridley Scott and writer David Scarpa who wrote a couple of mediocre scripts before this one. It would appear that Scott loves these newcomers as he did the same thing with William Monahan. He worked with him on Kingdom of Heaven, an arguably much better historic epic and a debut for Monahan. Now, here they were apparently working off a script written by Stanley Kubrick who kept trying to make the movie about the famous military commander for many decades. They’ve kept most of the structure and then Scarpa tried to make the movie more “entertaining”.

Whatever the fuck that means. And I’m not even going to talk about a huge number of historical inaccuracies. Napoleon is never too sure what it wants to be. Is it a detailed and very personal view of a capricious general? Or is it a more neutral rendition of historical events and important players during this time? Could it perhaps also be an intriguing examination of Napoleon’s tenues relationship with his wife Josephine? We go back and forth constantly, never really committing to any of these subplots. The movie Napoleon treats its viewers with the same indifference Napoleon treated his soldiers.

Something I think was the main message of this whole project, is the human cost of the ambition of one single individual. So, this is not a masterpiece and that’s perfectly okay. Once we’re aware of that fact we can relax and take in everything Napoleon has to offer. You can count on several epic battles full of excellent action sequences and poignant scenes. This is what the movie does best. The scale of these scenes is amazing, with hundreds of extras and believable special effects. However, even these sections feel kind of emotionally distant and just far too casual. I cared more about random horses drowning than any of the main characters.

Joaquin Phoenix did his usual Joaquin Phoenix thing and was amazing. I also loved seeing Rupert Everett as Duke of Wellington. Vanessa Kirby was a bit wobbly as Josephine and I don’t think Ridley’s original casting choice of Jodie Comer would’ve been great either. If you’re going down that path Natalie Dormer (Game of Thrones, The Tudors) is the perfect actress for the role. Finally, if you’re looking for more comprehensive content about Napoleon Bonaparte do check out the French miniseries Napoleon from 2002 starring Christian Clavier and Isabella Rossellini. And if you want that trademark Ridley Scott experience, The Last Duel is waiting for you.