Film Review - Napoleon (2023)

Napoleon is the new film by Ridley Scott and stars Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon, Arnold Rimmer’s all time favourite fascist dictator and this movie not only chronicles his rise to power in France but also his relationship with Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) and how that relationship was central to his life.

I was very much looking forward to this movie as it was a big historical epic and a new Ridley Scott film and I am a big fan of both plus Phoenix and Kirby are good actors but could it soar to great heights or does it meet its Waterloo.

Well sadly it is a bit of both, this is not in any way a bad movie but its also one that I feel falls short, firstly Scotts direction is very assured especially during the many battle scenes which look and sound amazing on a big cinema screen with a great sound system and during them I thought to myself “Ridley Scott is nearly 86 years old and he’s still giving us this” and the battles themselves are ugly, violent and glorious to watch as it feels like they were done for real on open plains and lots of extras fighting it out and they are fantastic to watch.

Also the films performances are good as well, Phoenix at times sounds like he’s just reciting the lines as Napoleon as he does the role in an American accent but he does a good job for the most part, Kirby is very good as Josephine and she finds a way to balance the sexual nature of her role as well as the isolation of her later years, I also enjoyed seeing Rupert Everett in a small role as well.

But where this film falls over is either in its script or its editing and Scott has since teased a longer version of this movie for its streaming release, watching the version in cinemas right now feels like the pieces of a great film are here except one crucial one and it holds this film back and a lot of the time the film feels like it is doing a lot of time skipping in too short a time frame, I wish Scott had decided to do a 3 hour cut for cinemas much like Christopher Nolans Oppenheimer and James Camerons Avatar the Way of Water were both 3 hour films that made good use of that runtime as I can’t help but think that if he had done so we would’ve gotten a much better film.

And so that was Napoleon and it is probably my biggest disappointment of 2023 movie wise, the pieces are here for a great film but it feels like something is missing and time will tell whether it was an editing decision or a scripting decision but for now its worth watching on a big screen but I wish this was so much better than it is, 2 and a half out of 5.