Movie Review: Ridley Scott’s Sweeping ‘Napoleon’ Epic Fails by Focusing on Josephine

Film fans have long been aware auteur legend Stanley Kubrick’s dream project was a big, sweeping epic about French officer-emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Fate would not be on the filmmaker’s side despite his many attempts, and he would eventually settle on making Barry Lyndon (1975) to a worthy reception.

Now, almost five decades later, we have a big, sweeping epic from Ridley Scott on the Frenchman titled simply Napoleon. But rather than channel Kubrick — like Scott did with his Lyndon-esque film debut The Duellists (1977) — Napoleon is funnily enough, more in line with Sofia Coppola.

This isn’t to say the new movie has similar direction to Coppola. It looks and feels just like a Ridley Scott picture. But the director actually seemed much more interested in Bonaparte’s marriage to his first wife Joséphine than he is with France’s history. It’s similar to how Coppola’s depiction of the French King and Queen in Marie Antoinette (2006), or Marie Kreutzer’s take on Austria’s Emperor Franz and Empress Sissi in Corsage (2022).

In Scott’s film, we see Napoleon Bonaparte (Joaquin Phoenix) go from modest army officer to emperor from 1793 to 1821 during and after the French Revolution. In this screen interpretation, Bonaparte is motivated to win the respect of Europe not by power, wit or peace — but just so he can get back to his tumultuous and passionate relationship with Joséphine de Beauharnais (Vanessa Kirby).

In between leading bloody battles and invading lands, we have Napoleon writing love letters to Joséphine, which she rarely responds to, and begging her to give him an heir. Rupert Everett, Tahar Rahim and Sinéad Cusack co-star.

While having Joséphine become the center of Napoleon is an interesting idea, the problem is Scott doesn’t completely embrace the love-story angle as the main theme. Many of the action sequences and discussions between military and government officials feel shoehorned, either by habit from Scott, or from the studio pushing for them to be included.

A couple of big issues are the performances and characterizations. Kirby is rather good and does well with the material she’s given, but Phoenix is woefully miscast and distractingly out of place. He’s great when Napoleon has to be angry and frustrated, but awkward and unconvincing when he’s supposed to be pathetic and immature.

I also just didn’t care very much for how either of the leads are portrayed. Joséphine comes off vein and selfish, while Napoleon is a foolish pushover, and neither have enough charm to pull off the Euro equivalent of Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler.

From what I understand, David Scarpa’s screenplay is kind of like British propaganda from a historical standpoint. How does Bonaparte have so many supporters and a great track record if he can be easily overpowered by his wife? Phoenix is uncharacteristically a complete charisma vacuum on screen.

I’ve read that Scott and Scarpa intended Napoleon to be a satirical dissection of the concept of brilliant, powerful men. If so, that doesn’t really work here either, because the tone and execution are played completely straight, similar to Scott’s previous action-heavy costume pieces Gladiator (2000) and The Last Duel (2021). 

At the end of the day, I don’t understand why Scott chose Bonaparte for his latest historical feature. Napoleon Bonaparte being a simp who couldn’t say no to Joséphine de Beauharnais is just not that interesting of a story, and Scott clearly couldn’t decide if Napoleon should be a romantic drama or a war epic.