Napoleon
Napoleon. Ridley Scott's choice to play this as a farce like Death of Stalin, or Great Catherine with Peter O'Toole is confusing to me. Epics are 3 hours. Farce needs to work on a shorter time scale. This is 3 hours.
As others have said, Napoleon would never have deliberately fired cannon onto the Pyramids. Unsuccessful comedy and lying about verifiable history are strange choices.
Phoenix's line readings are so flat and wooden with a self perceived stern face that's like a constipated Donald Trump on qualudes. At least Napoleon can walk down a ramp, I guess that's something.
Ice in the desert is cute detail they got right. Points for that.
This whole farce thing doesn't work.
Him fucking Josephine is goofy, not funny. Tone matters.
Austerlitz is just a celebration of not understanding tactics or screen direction. Wtf Ridley. Read a book on the actual battle rather rolling a bunch of shots of guys freezing in water. This is MEG 2 level dumb shit, but it's pretending to be serious. Again the tone shifts? Are you making an epic now? Oh. Really. It lumbers back and forth from trying to be a historical epic, to having wannabe Terry Southern comedic stylings. Just a weird characterization of a complex person. No mention of what made him successful: unprecedented staff work and logistics, with the zeal to get that work out of his staff. Cult of personality shit. He took that shit seriously and that's how he beat the odds in battle. Napoleon changed how War was fought. He showed that the monarchies of Europe were old outmoded institutions and these Kings and Princes were just rich people, not smart people, not divinely ordained Masters of the Universe. None of that here. Just a man strangely uncharismatic, unfunny, boring and with a style of fucking that seems at best unenjoyable. Joaquin Phoenix can be very effective as an actor. Here he is just empty: of character, of emotion, of empathy. Just lost, which Napoleon certainly never was.
One good joke. When Josephine is divorced she goes to live at Chateau Malmaison. Translated roughly: Palace Wrong House. Not even a joke though, true place.
There's some good scenes. Sometimes they're actually turned and strung together. But no great scenes at all.
At least they get Wellington's use of squares in the battle of Waterloo; beautiful choreography, but even here we aren't given a reason to care.
It seems it requires the audience to actually know a good deal about Napoleon because we're just driving headlong through a pretty jam packed history of European upheaval and a Revolution in Military Affairs on a very compressed time frame; yet if you do know a bit then you know how much bullshit is being tossed about here. Again, strange.
Vanessa Kirby is the good thing here. Sure, I have a weakness for her; she's funny, she looks cool, she seems smart. Amazon should have offered her free rides into space and remade the Library of Alexandria to get her to play Galadrial in their messy Rings thing, but I digress. She's one of the only solid things here and yet she's still only allowed to be no deeper than a few inches. She's kinda like Jodie Comer's character in The Last Duel. A woman at the center of the story that the protagonists don't/won't understand. Maybe it's a Ridley Scott thing these days, he can't see the women characters, so he leaves them alone, and that's for the better. So in summation: Script not good. Acting not good. Direction muddled. Nice workman like Cinematography. Nice workman like Production Design. 3 hour runtime is both too long and too short. I'd rate this Avoid. Watch at your peril. Streaming on Apple TV+