Napoleon

Napoleon

A personal look at the French military leader’s origins and swift, ruthless climb to emperor, viewed through the prism of Napoleon’s addictive, volatile relationship with his wife and one true love, Josephine.

  • Released:
  • Runtime: 158 minutes
  • Genre: Drama, History, War
  • Stars: Tahar Rahim, Thom Ashley, David Verrey, Joaquin Phoenix, Erin Ainsworth, Jean-Pascal Heynemand, Clyde Vassallo, Vanessa Kirby, Gavin Spokes, Paul Riddell, John Hollingworth, Cesare Taurasi, Paul O'Kelly, Ludivine Sagnier, Arthur McBain, Ed Eales White, Davide Tucci, Phil Cornwell, Edouard Philipponnat, Hannah Flynn
  • Director: Ridley Scott
 Comments
  • mark-dawley - 12 June 2024
    Historically lacking and poor acting
    Napoleon is a classic example of a Hollywood hatchet job of history. Napoleon's rise to power is almost completely ignored for the sake of doggie style screwing. Phoenix's acting range is slightly better than Samuel L Jackson's, which is a very low bar. The dialogue was simplest and so historically fiction. I really wanted this to show the collapse of the French royalty with an emperor. The definition of a revolution is that you end where began but that is completely ignored the significance of that reality. What a wasted opportunity to have a teachable moment. Humping seems to be to only thing the film is interested in throughout the first half of this mess. Oh well, at least I watched on a flight and didn't waste any real free time.
  • christainvillegas - 17 May 2024
    yur
    The movie Napoleon was a decent movie wasn't my type but if your into knowing what happen or what are some things that napoleon has done but it was a decent but kinda funny at some parts movie I didn't liked how from the start he shot people in the street with a lot of cannons and there was another part that I didn't like is how old of his guys where sleeping with his wife and she was cheating while he was away many times but I liked how funny Napoleon was he just kept and kept having sex anywhere at anytime and I liked his way of thinking of things and I liked how he was made king and put the crown of France on his head.
  • Ducksnrabbits - 4 May 2024
    "You think you're so great because you have boats!"
    As cinema goes, this is more poetry than prose. It has to be. The history is so lengthy and intricate that hard choices must be made to capture some of the essential curiosities and lessons from Napoleon's saga, and the film takes some artistic liberties to get at those truths.

    It's not perfectly accurate, and it clearly isn't aiming to be. Ridley Scott is no dummy. There is obviously something absurd about making such a colossal epic about French historical figures with unapologetically English-speaking actors. The funny thing is that it kind of works given the film's thematic point. Napoleon was kind of an absurd figure. He had this massive sublime aura in the popular imagination, this emperor, conqueror, and legend, and repository for French revolutionary ideas. Yet the man himself was just a man, and an angst-ridden, flawed, and not terribly interesting one at that. His battle strategy was great, and he had a weird personal charisma that Phoenix captures impressively. We don't exactly like him, but he's fascinating, and we can't look away. Napoleon's success was absurd too-the product of ambition, shrewd tactics in war, politics, propaganda, weird charisma, and an absolutely massive amount of luck. Events unfold in frank succession sort of like they do in a Wes Anderson movie. Things happen because they are part of the story, as if some hand of fate or grand narrator guides Napoleon through a sequence of inevitable events.

    And the point here is to depict the really interesting highlights of the battles, which are incredibly fun to see depicted at the massive scale the film's budget affords, without deifying the man. A lot of people died for not such good reasons, many of which stemmed from Napoleon himself and the hold he had on the popular imagination. It's goofy seeing these French people talking in American accents. These people were also a little goofy.

    This is a period of history that mainstream American audiences don't remember much about, and those who forget history are doomed to forget it. It's not perfect, and it takes a lot of liberties, but it captures the essence of Napoleon's mysterious and mixed legacy. In the end, he achieves the immortality of enduring fame, but he's not a role model. More than anything, he got lucky.

    I want to see the director's cut too, but I also get why the film had to work in a sparse, poetic language and style for the theatrical release.