REVIEW: Napoleon [2023]

Rating: R | Runtime: 158 minutes
Release Date: November 22nd, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Apple Studios / Sony Pictures Releasing
Director(s): Ridley Scott
Writer(s): David Scarpa

You think you’re so great because you have boats!

So, which one is it? Did Ridley Scott learn from his experience with House of Gucci that forcing bad accents only makes biopics worse? Or does the lack of French accents in Napoleon reveal that it was the Gucci actors who decided to do whatever it was they thought they were doing and he let them?

Perhaps it’s simply a product of style and how Scott wanted to deliver the respective comedic tones that run through both—if said tone is intentional, something I must believe since he’s too seasoned and particular a filmmaker for it not to be. He wanted Gucci to be a cartoon and Napoleon the rise and fall of a bratty, boorish idiot. To his credit, both do prove entertaining. Sadly, they also both fail to be much more than that.

David Scarpa’s script focusing on Napoleon’s (Joaquin Phoenix is hilarious) life through the prism of his relationship with Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) is an intriguing one considering the letters they wrote to each other (which, as the movie explains, were stolen and sold upon her death). I like the idea that these two were always better together despite their deficiencies where fidelity was concerned and that he ultimately paved his own demise by choosing legacy over love.

I don’t, however, think the film does a great job keeping this focus considering Kirby is all but absent for the majority of the second half—a pawn shown in the background or remembered solely through Phoenix uttering her name as he writes about his latest insecurities. Josephine isn’t given enough to make the whole as electric as it is when the two of them are debating the merits of their union in the private and public spheres of their ambition. I wish she were since the rest is rather forgettable. Boring even when it comes to moments like Waterloo’s inevitability (save Phoenix’s always funny petulance).

I’ll give Scott credit for the battle on the ice, though. It’s a fantastic scene rivaled only by Phoenix and Kirby goofing around as they portray their characters’ silly flirtations. Maybe Scott will eventually tear down the Oscar-bait-y façade his projects seem unable to relinquish and just make the full-blown farce it seems he so desperately wants. I hope it’s coming so we can reevaluate this current era of his career as a lead-up to its insanity rather than a muddled mess.

And if, as rumors say, a four-hour “director’s cut” is released on AppleTV+, I don’t think I’ll watch. Because it’s not 2005. We were deprived of Scott’s vision when Kingdom of Heaven debuted and subsequently granted the opportunity to see it afterwards. Last I checked it’s 2023 and Apple had the ability to just release what they’re apparently going to release anyway on streaming right away, rendering this cut an intentionally inferior product in the hopes curiosity, rather than desire, gets viewers to double dip. It’s a potential precedent making me consider whether I should avoid Apple titles altogether.