Dec 12, 20232 min read

FILM REVIEW: NAPOLEON (15) ESP RATING: 3/5

Ridley Scott’s Napoleon story only succeeds on a certain level.

As a love story – with a superb acting chemistry between leads Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby as Napoleon Bonaparte and his wife, Josephine, respectively – it prevails in one sense, with this plotline as its main focus.

But if you want to see the climb to power of France’s ruthless emperor, it doesn’t really go into that in enough depth, and skims quite quickly through his years in power – without ever really highlighting the true gravitas of his achievements.

There’s a couple of impressive action sequences – headlined by a bloody film-stealing battle between the French and Austrian/Russian army over the frozen lakes of Austerlitz – but outside of the intense romantic storyline, it doesn’t really linger in the memory too long compared to similar historical epics. And apparently according to French historians, some of the facts in Scott’s version are a little circumstantial to say the least.

Napoleon (Joker’s Oscar-winner Phoenix) is a young army officer amid the French Revolution in 1793 – and after several tactical victories starts to move up the ranks in his country.

In the meantime, he woos aristocratic widow Josephine de Beauharnais (Mission: Impossible’s Kirby), but despite an active sex life, they bear no children – which leads to an addictively-volatile relationship.

Eventually he is crowned ‘Emperor of the French’ by the Pope in 1804 – in which he audaciously puts the crown on his own head – and continues to battle countries failing to ally with his beloved France, including the British.

Which leads to a finale with the famous 1815 Battle of Waterloo – against Rupert Everett’s Duke of Wellington – after Napoleon’s French army had recently undertaken a gruelling invasion of Russia.

Whether Oscar-winner Scott’s (Gladiator) decision to let a host of Napoleon’s accomplishments play ‘second fiddle’ to the prism of the main love storyline thread will be open to some conjecture, but as a whole this is still a competent piece. It just never seems to quite get out of third gear.

And with someone like Phoenix playing the illustrious title character, you can’t help but think something a bit more grandiose could have played out here.

Once thing’s for sure, it definitely won’t conquer the Oscars – which undoubtedly was Napoleon’s ultimate battle plan.

ESP Rating: 3/5

Gavin Miller