Napoleon Is a Spectacular Mess

Ridley Scott’s Napoleon is a 2-hour-and-38-minute -long epic about Napoleon Bonaparte .

Joaquin Phoenix plays Napoleon , played by the 49-year-old actor.

The most engaging conflict arises from the relationship between Napoleon and Joséphine de Beauharnais (Vanessa Kirby).

The film's biggest flaw is this lack of engagement with the political meaning of Napoleon ’s outsized achievements and even more outsized failures.

The viewer learns very little about the political machinations that place and keep Napoleon in power, the international coalitions that constantly threaten to end his reign, or simply the state of his reputation among the French people.

Ridley Scott and Joaquin Phoenix last worked together on the 2000 Best Picture winner Gladiator.

Napoleon 's vision of a violent period in the past that continues to resonate in the present belongs in the tradition of Scott ’s swords-and-sandals epic of a generation ago .

It is with regret that I relate that I was not entertained by the film.