Movie Review: 'Napoleon' is a Throwback to Old Hollywood Epics

Napoleon (2023)

Directed by Ridley Scott

Written by David Scarpa

Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Vanessa Kirby

Release Date November 22nd, 2023

Published November 27th, 2023

Napoleon stars Joaquin Phoenix as the legendary French dictator Napoleon Bonaparte. Once merely a soldier, Napoleon is driven by an iron will to become the leader of all France. What drives Napoleon? What experiences made him such a single minded, obsessive leader, clinging with all of his might to power? That's the heart of what Ridley Scott is after in Napoleon and its questionable whether or not he found it. Regardless, the film is wildly accomplished, technically superb, but it lingers a great deal and some of the lingering aspects leave you wondering what the point of it all is. Whether the lack of a point may be the point.

We meet Napoleon Bonaparte (Joaquin Phoenix) during the French Revolution. Marie Antoinette is dragged from the royal palace of France and taken to the gallows. France lines up behind the revolutionary Robespierre but he's soon deposed as well. As Bonaparte helps quell another coup attempt, the power vacuum in France sweeps up more leaders until the tip of the French sword, Napoleon himself, takes the reigns. It was a very fast rise to power but given the lack of true leaders, the spineless neophyte politicians, and remaining royalists, it's no wonder that a dictator willing to get his hands bloody would eventually take hold.

Written off as a brute, Napoleon uses force to establish dominance and cunning to win on the battlefield. Regardless of what the bourgeois aristocrats of France think, Napoleon commands an army while they can merely command words. As Napoleon's power grows, he seeks companionship and finds it in a former aristocrat whose husband was beheaded in one of the many revolutions. Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) is a snakelike woman capable of slithering into any man's bed. She makes plain that she has a history and that if Napoleon has a problem with that, as so many men do, he should look elsewhere.

Her forceful sexuality and allure are more than enough for Napoleon to overlook her potentially scandalous background. The two are married and Napoleon leaves to conquer the known world. We see him in various parts of the world, most notably Egypt where France attempted to destroy the ancient pyramids and Napoleon came face to face with Egyptian royalty in the form of a disinterred Mummy whom Napoleon cannot help but compare himself in terms of stature. Napoleon wishes to be as venerated as the Egyptian leaders were, but he first must deal with his cheating wife and a series of toady politicians looking to gain his favor.

Ego and ambition will eventually be Napoleon's downfall. Various wars that Napoleon won would prove fruitless as he made more and more enemies, foreign and domestic. He conquered Russia only to find Moscow abandoned and then burned to the ground, not by his forces. He returned from Russia only to be exiled and all the while, he's lost his Josephine. Unable to produce a child heir to the newly restored French crown, Napoleon was forced to divorce Josephine and marry someone who could produce a child for him.

Napoleon and Josephine would remain in love, according to the movie, and send each other letters for many years after their divorce. She's even gifted a home and plenty of money to carry out her days away from the new royal Bonaparte family. Napoleon will still visit and remains in love with her, and it shines a wilting light on the oddball morality of royal customs. These scenes of Napoleon and Josephine's divorce and their lingering love for one another are some of the best in the film thanks to Vanessa Kirby's heartbreaking performance.

I admire Napoleon as a movie but I find myself not entirely engaged by it. I appreciate the grandeur the film delivers, it is incredibly well accomplished, but after a while, I simply didn't care. The film has a pointless quality. At a certain point we're watching dramatic recreations of hundreds year old battles and they are spectacular but dramatically inert. Napoleon the man is viewed as a master technician whose only fault is his massive ego which blinds him to the notion that he could ever lose or need to build relationships and maintain his leadership.

He was denigrated as an unthinking brute, the tip of the French sword, and eventually he came to believe the hype. Napoleon comes to believe that might means right and that if he can enact the right battle plan, show enough brute force via the military, he can reclaim his rightful place as the Emperor Napoleon. In his hubris he ends up underestimating his opponents and it is his downfall. This is all presented in the most epic fashion. Indeed, director Ridley Scott spares no expense in crafting a Napoleon worthy of an epic biopic of grand historic sweep.

If you like this kind of thing, Napoleon is the movie for you. It's not so much for me. I don't really care about Napoleon. I learned about Napoleon in history class in High School. I understand the lessons there are to learn about Napoleon. I have, in fact, used much of the knowledge that I already have of Napoleon to craft much of this review. The movie doesn't really have much of anything new to say about Napoleon as a leader, a conqueror, a dictator, or a man in love. The film doesn't mention anything about Napoleon's height and that's perfectly fine, his being quite short has never been historically accurate.

So, yeah, there is truly nothing new here. There doesn't appear to be much of a lesson to be learned regarding Napoleon. Unlike Scott's previous epic, The Last Duel, there is nothing particularly challenging or unique. The Last Duel placed a woman at the center of a conflict among men and made her truly matter to how the story was being told. That film took an ancient epic and made it feel alive for this era. Vanessa Kirby in Napoleon does a remarkable job of giving life to Josephine Bonaparte but there is nothing new involved. Perhaps the emotional nature of their divorce has been lost to history but that is not the center of the movie Napoleon, merely a well-crafted chapter.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Napoleon as a sweeping epic film brimming with bloody battles and court intrigue. The historic accuracy of the film is negligible, but this isn't intended as a history lesson. All in all, the filmmaking is remarkably compelling, even if you're like me and you don't find the subject all that interesting. As an exercise in epic, sweeping, filmmaking of a long-ago generation, Napoleon can rank highly among fellow epics of years past such as Ben Hur or Lawrence of Arabia, indulgent, expansive, and expensive feature films that dazzle audiences with filmmaking techniques that bring history to Hollywood in spectacular fashion.

Find my archive of more than 20 years and nearly 2000 movie reviews at SeanattheMovies.blogspot.com. Find my modern review archive on my Vocal Profile, linked here. Follow me on Twitter at PodcastSean. Follow the archive blog on Twitter at SeanattheMovies. Listen to me talk about movies on the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast. If you have enjoyed what you have read, consider subscribing to my writing on Vocal. if you'd like to support my writing, you can do so by making a monthly pledge or by leaving a one-time tip. Thanks!