Napoleon

Mr. Phoenix's Napoleon could never have commanded so much as a squadron of the Salvation Army, and though the movie is sprinkled with a few reasonably hearty battle scenes, overall it's something like Mr. Scott's Waterloo.

I found it impressive and kind of startling at times, but I was not emotionally moved.

Ridley Scott delivers a spectacular but flavourless French history lesson.

If film fans trek to their local cinema, the meticulously staged war sequences, played like chess games, will keep them intrigued.

The best thing about this Napoleon can be found in the scenes that reproduce the intense relationship between Bonaparte and his first wife, Josephine. [Full review in Spanish]

I feel like Ridley Scott and Joaquin Phoenix dislike Napoleon too much to actually make a film about Napoleon.

[Napoleon] is a wonderfully subversive act of historical revisionism, undercutting these momentous events as atrocity-laden attempts to placate one of history’s hugest egos.

...Ridley Scott, who at 85 continues to bring out his best not only with the fine detailing of the narrative showing the rise and downfall of the emperor but also bringing in the complexities of the characters with panache and finesse.

It’s a masterful film in terms of spectacle.

A paint-by-numbers biopic that seems woefully indecisive in its opinion of the man whose story it’s portraying.