Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Napoleon’ on VOD, a Cloddish Biopic-Romance-Battle Epic That Does Joaquin Phoenix No Favors

Ridley Scott movies always feel like capital-E Events, because they’re always about big things, case in point, Napoleon (now streaming on VOD outlets like Prime Video). Of course, HE wasn’t a big thing, per se, the French ruler being a little, you know, untall on one end, but “big things” isn’t intended to be a literal description. This period biopic reunites Scott with his Gladiator star Joaquin Phoenix, who plays Monsieur Bonaparte as a deep, deep weirdo who happens to be a genius military strategist – and also possibly the worst sex-haver in the history of having sex. In the interest of giving some focus to the story of a notorious historical figure who did a hell of a lot of conquering and political coup-de-tat-ing, the film frames the Napoleon saga within his relationship with his wife Josephine, played by Vanessa Kirby. Notably, Scott was criticized for taking some liberties with history, pushing back with a flimsy “were you actually there?” defense when he could’ve explained to all the pedants that this is a “movie,” made with writers and actors and CGI and artificial lighting and other things that render it fundamentally “inaccurate,” and therefore lends itself to “taking creative license” in pursuit of something you might call “historical fiction.” Now, if only Scott was making a passionate defense of a movie that deserved it.

NAPOLEON: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We’ll cover a couple of decades, give or take a couple years, of Napoleon’s (Phoenix) life here, starting with his witnessing the public beheading of Marie Antoinette in 1793, then going all the way to Waterloo in 1815. He starts his pretty good run of gross imperialism during the siege of Toulon, leading the French’s successful assault on the British navy, during which Napoleon’s life is saved when his horse rears up and catches a cannonball that would’ve changed the living shit out of the course of history – for better or worse, I’m not sure, because this movie isn’t particularly interested in making anything particularly clear, whether it’s character motivation, detailed depictions of events or any implications spinning out of those two components. Anyway, Napoleon’s victory earns him the title of general, which leads to him playing a part in ending the Reign of Terror – his soldiers fire cannons directly into a batch of significantly less heavily armed civilian rebels – and therefore becoming one of the country’s key political leaders.

At this point, we learn that Napoleon is far better at commandeering troops than speaking to other human beings in a social setting. He walks into a party and gives off serious nerdtrovert wallflower vibes, but his reputation precedes him enough that the widow Josephine (Kirby) is compelled to approach him and ask him why he’s leering at her like a creep. They have a couple of dates, followed by this exchange between Josephine and a friend: “Do you find him without appeal?” the friend asks. “No.” “Then perhaps that is enough.” Sounds like love in its purest form! And so the lovely Josephine, perhaps a social climber or maybe someone seeking security for her children or perhaps enamored by men who look like the Jack of Diamonds from a deck of cards that have seen a few too many fiery hands of whist, marries Napoleon, after which they retire to the marital bed so he may unleash his randy inner beast (most likely a coked-up jackrabbit, or any type of ugly rodent) while she rolls her eyes, wrinkles her nose a little and does whatever people did with their brains before they could passively scroll through Instagram.

From here, we’re supposed to believe that all the wild ups and downs of their marriage are the passionate emotional framework for Napoleon’s career as Tiny Emperor of France and conqueror of territories. He gets in trouble for leaving the scene of his overtaking of Egypt – cue the firing of cannonballs into the Great Pyramid of Giza, which, the pedants will point out, never really happened, and to which Scott essentially replied, hey, it looks cool though – so he can go home and chastise Josephine for taking a lover on the side, a fact that gets splashed across all the newspapers. And yet Josephine and King Cuck stay together, because the screenplay seems to insist upon their being forever bonded to each other like one thing superglued to another thing, even though we never really understand why their love-glue is so sticky in the first place. 

Anyway, they really hit the rocks when the fruit juice of Napoleon’s stubby loins fails to produce an heir, something that was very important for 19th-century emperors. (There’s the possibility that Josephine is unable to conceive, but it’s more fun to ridicule his ass.) This starts a big marital battle, which, if you stretch it a little, is mirrored by Napoleon’s battle against the allied Austrian/Russian forces, since Josephine and Napoleon love each other but can’t make it work, just like Napoleon thinks he has a good thing going with the Russian tsar until he doesn’t. And the movie goes on like this for a bit, with their marriage going south as Napoleon sends his troops out to massacre and be massacred, and he does it all for her, or maybe because of her, I think, sort of, almost.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Scott has only directed a handful of this type of battle epic – Exodus: Gods and Kings, Kingdom of Heaven, Robin Hood, maybe Gladiator – but it seems like so many more, because each is really, really long and/or have even longer director’s cuts.

Performance Worth Watching: My long-held assertion that Phoenix is worth watching in anything is put to the test with Napoleon. He seems either miscast or unable to find the key to the character’s charisma and drive. Phoenix flashes with brilliance – it’s inevitable with an actor of his caliber – and he’s fascinatingly unpredictable at times, but the performance ultimately reflects the film’s overall lack of coherence.

Memorable Dialogue: “I’m not built like other men. I’m not subject to petty insecurity,” says Napoleon, who later bleats to a British ambassador like a petulant boy, “YOU THINK YOU’RE SO GREAT BECAUSE YOU HAVE BOATS!”

Sex and Skin: Not much skin, but there are a couple of amusing sex scenes that illustrate Napoleon’s, to put it gently, marked lack of bedroom savvy (to reference another Scott film, see also: Matt Damon in The Last Duel). 

Our Take: Napoleon is one of Scott’s many impressive mediocrities, another expensive and ambitious endeavor that doesn’t live up to the potential of its considerable talent in front of and behind the camera. It feels either rushed or underwritten or overedited, or all of the above. Its narrative crux is supposed to be the strange and beguiling mismatched romance between Jospehine and Napoleon – she’s lovely and elegant, he’s, uh, stubby and kisses her like a chihuahua attacking a dropped ice cream cone – but it seems as if the scenes that are supposed to convince us of their eternal passion have been hastily excised in order to put greater emphasis on the battle sequences. Mind you, they’re pretty good-looking battle sequences, expertly staged and executed, although they lack dramatic consequence, because the screenplay gracelessly hopscotches from one set piece to the next, and never establishes any rooting stakes in the conflict.

On second thought, we don’t need rooting stakes. Rather, Scott should be cultivating our fascination and curiosity with the ethics of imperialism, and what drives men to quest for power – food for thought that never finds its footing in a mushy narrative that lacks clarity and detail, and has no flow. Tonally, it’s flat and unengaging, leaving us uncertain whether we should be taking it seriously or reading Phoenix’s simpering interpretation of Napoleon as satire. Phoenix inspires some laughter at times – “Destiny has brought me this lamb chop!” is how Napoleon punctuates one verbal scrap with Josephine – but is it intentional? Should we take this guy seriously, or is this characterization along the lines of a Looney Tunes portrayal of Hitler from the 1940s? We expect Phoenix to give a go-big-or-go-home performance, and he upends that expectation with an understated turn that feels flat and uninspired, subtle without the depth of writing to bolster it. Would Napoleon rather be rolling his cannons through Russia, or back home in Jospehine’s arms? It’s a mystery not to be solved here. There’s talk of Scott releasing a four-hour director’s cut that might salvage Napoleon, but as it stands, this 158-minute version is disappointingly incoherent.

Our Call: Funny, how so many people are griping that Napoleon is too short. SKIP IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.