Napoleon - Not What I'd Hoped For

it's no secret that 2023 hasn't exactly been a bumper year for mainstream movies as the bloated decomposing corpses of the big superhero franchises expelled their final flatulent excretions and the world collectively cringed at the sight of an octogenarian Indiana Jones being led around by an insufferable gender studies graduates idea of what a strong female character is supposed to be not to mention a summer of discontent that's going to have KnockOn effects for years to come it didn't seem like there was much cause for optimism about the future of Cinema but movies like Oppenheimer and to a lesser extent killers of the flower Moon proved that there's still an appetite for smart mature thoughtful films made by competent directors with genuine artistic visions and I think we were all hoping that Napoleon the latest movie by Ridley Scott might just end an otherwise Bleak year on a high note delivering the kind of sweeping historical epic that Hollywood used to be so good at and providing a much needed victory in the war to save Cinema and I'd very much like to tell you that it did but unfortunately that would be a lie the reality is that while Napoleon definitely isn't the worst thing I've seen this year it's still a pretty flawed movie that suffers from a crippling lack of focus uneven pacing lack of detail and context muddled performances from actors that are capable of so much more and the kind of historical inaccuracies that make Braveheart look like Master and Commander in short it's a pretty frustrating film with great potential that just like its namesake is ultimately done by its own lofty Ambitions the film as the title suggests follows the life and career of Napoleon bonapart the little French guy with a big appetite for military conquest The Story covers his humble beginnings as a promising young artillery officer his rise to power through a string of military victories and political coups his crowning as Emperor and his eventual Fall From Grace all culminating in his final defeat ATS if I was to start my review with the positives I'd say that Napoleon is is definitely a well put together production from a technical point of view the sets the uniforms and the cinematography are all excellent Ridley Scotts been directing movies longer than I've been alive so it's fair to say he knows what he's doing by this point the battle scenes are suitably violent and destructive even if they're not historically accurate there's good use of practical effects and stunt men rather than CGI and they give you some sense of just how brutal and unforgiving Napoleonic Warfare really was the problems with this film lie more in the writing and editing the biggest one being the sheer amount of people battles and events that the movie tries to cram into its 2 and 1 half hour run time covering almost three decades of Napoleon's military and political career is really the work of a multi-season TV show like The Crown not a feature film and the result is the narrative gets spread so thin and key events get so oversimplified that a lot of the time you don't really know what's going on or why it's more like a Whistle Stop tour of the big moments in Napoleon's life giving you just enough to understand what's happening at that precise moment but lacking The Wider context needed to explain why it matters so much the reasons for Napoleon's endless Wars with Britain Spain and Prussia are never really explained his campaign in Egypt and his reasons for returning to Europe are either glossed over or completely fabricated even his invasion of Russia the major turning point in his life and career is only given a couple of lines of vague dialogue to justify it it's the same problem with the battle scenes major conflicts like Oulet waterl and borodino which were spread over miles of Front Line involved hundreds of thousands of men and lasted entire days are mostly resolved with a single engagement in what seems to be a matter of minutes there's very little insight into the Tactical genius planning and creativity that made Napoleon such a successful Commander not to mention the historical Liberties the film takes armies of this time period did not rise up out of trenches to fire at each other Cavalry couldn't charge through their own infantry lines without trampling most of their own men to death and Napoleon did not not personally fight at waterl because that would have been stupid like I say trying to cover so many complicated military and political events would have been challenging enough for any movie but the other big problem that Napoleon has to contend with is the love story that eats up huge amounts of desperately needed screen time the romance between Napoleon and his wife Josephine is intended to form the emotional heart of the movie but the problem is that the script just doesn't seem to know what to do with it most of the time there's not enough connecting tissue between their marital strife and personal challenges and Napoleon's larger Ambitions on the world stage to make them feel like two halves of the same story The Chemistry Between the two characters isn't strong enough to get me invested in the relationship and honestly Josephine doesn't really come across as likable or interesting enough to have me rooting for her the fact that she becomes largely irrelevant to the narrative around the midpoint of the movie doesn't help much either I mean Vanessa Kirby turns in a good performance but it's really more a case of a good actor elevating a weak scripts Wen Phoenix on the other hand turns out to be weirdly lost with this one like he's overwhelmed by the role and doesn't quite know how to play Napoleon which ironically isn't too far from the truth as it happens at times he's a stoic composed military leader watching battles unfold without emotion other times he's trembling with fear at the prospect of going into combat and at others he's shouting and screaming like a petulent child sometimes he's a domineering terrifying presence around his wife others he's stiff and awkward and others still he's whimpering and submissive there's no real consistency or definable Arc to his behavior he just kind of drifts into different characters from scene to scene I mean say what you want about rodiger's performance in waterl but the man had a definite Creative Vision for his take on the character you understood pretty clearly who he was and What mattered to him and he carried that idea through from start to finish Phoenix on the other hand feels unprepared and dwarfed by the scale of the role he's got to take on it doesn't help either that he's completely the wrong age for most of the film like at the siege of tulon at the beginning of the movie movie the real Napoleon was only 24 years old while Phoenix is almost 50 and he looks it I mean ask yourself this does this really looked like a 24y old man to you all of these problems add up to a movie that probably shouldn't have been a movie at all a 10 episode TV series would have been a much better vehicle for putting Napoleon's life and achievements into a broader context or a romance movie told exclusively from Josephine's point of view would have fleshed out their private life more effectively without trying to balance it against all the Epic World changing events around them as it stands though Napoleon is more of a victim of its own Ambitions weighed down by the sheer scale of what it was trying to accomplish and as a result it ends up being a frustratingly flawed product that could and should have been something far better anyway that's all I've got for today go away now

Channel: The Critical Drinker

Views: 1,390,609

Keywords: critical drinker, review, funny, best

Id: uvIoMvPUhxQ

Length: 6min 51sec (411 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 30 2023