Like a tour of the optometrist's: there's a lot of grind and not enough spectacles.

Ridley Scott made the dubious decision to focus the lens of Napoleon Bonaparte's biopic on his love life rather than his military expertise and failures.

So, instead of examining his expansion into the Americas and the political savior faire required to unify a divided France (by, for example, naming the Place des Vosges in Paris after the first French region to send taxes to the empire), we get overlong scenes of him having bad sex with his wife while both of them wear all the clothes.

Not to mention, and I won't because I'm alone in this, that the movie is made entirely in English, which is the intellectual equivalent of watching a civil war movie where the North and the South run around speaking German.

Nope, sadly, instead of a film worthy of an emperor we get a pile of reenactments based on some famous paintings.

The fights and battle scenes were nice. However, the romance scenes were really cringe (that it was actually almost uncomfortable to watch) - was Napoleon really like this or are they exaggerating it?

The performance of Phoenix was really weird when he was talking about fighting at the Toulon port, was really monotoned for some reason but his voice acting got better as the show went on.

Is this a good movie? No not really. Are there well written characters? Not in my opinion. Did I leave understanding Napoleon or Josephine? Not particularly.


Was this movie fucking awesome? YES!

Will I watch the 4 hour Apple+ cut? 100% yes.

utterly boring... I turned it off with an hour to go.

Ridley Scott. The king of epic. A must watch for anyone who loves epic battles.
I don't know what to think of Napoleon because I haven't done my research, and this movie seems to be too nice in all parts. I learnt a lot, yet I could have learnt more. It should have included a little information on who each person was the same way little facts popped up on the screen telling us the location, year, or how many died. Heartbreaking how more than 3 million French people danced into their deaths, simply because a man had the power to. What's even more heartbreaking is times haven't really changed.
Besides the writing, the production was phenomenal. Apple TV is becoming one of my favourites. The acting was atrociously good. The score was tense, and Joaquin Phoenix was legendary as per.

What an incredibly boring movie. Totally lost interest after an hour with no incentive to carry on.

I always thought Napoleon to be an interesting character but after watching this I couldn't care less. He rather seems to be some kind of idiot. Also, the events in this movie are rushed through in a manner that is hard to follow and therefore hard to connect with. The only positive I can offer from this movie are the costumes and the sets.

According to imdb this movie made 214m$ worldwide. With a budget of about 200m this is a colossal failure. And I totally understand why.

Joaquin Phoenix. That should be enough to make you run for the door immediately. He has almost no acting chops, is unlikable as both a person and as a character and frankly has no business being in show business (neither do I, by the way, he's better than I am at acting).

This tries to be so epic but turns out being so grinding, historically inaccurate, pandering and while it's sometimes has some epic scenes, it really makes you pay to see them.

I dare say that a simple film. It is true that when narrating a biopic you must assimilate to reality, but very linear when it comes to blending in with the film. You don't empathize with the protagonist, you don't get tense, you don't get sad, you don't get excited, or you don't have fun. The only thing that saves the film is the visuals. Perfect on a visual level, beautiful shots, splendid sequences. A Colossal movie. As for the acting, I would say that Joaquín is not in his best role, he is not a difficult character to play in my opinion, he does not bring out his best version.

At times, this feels like Ridley Scott in top form, directing sweeping, epic historical battles. At times, it feels like an absurdist black comedy à la The Great. (My entire theater lost it at "You think you're so great because you have BOATS!") But most of the time, it feels like an entire season of television hopelessly compressed into 2.5 hours. As a result, I understood little and cared even less.

Maybe the 4-hour cut will be better, but I doubt it. The sheer number of things it touches on - characters, political maneuvers, relationships, battles - seems like it would take 10 hours to cover properly.

"Destiny has brought me here. Destiny has brought me this lamb chop!"

This looks like something how all historical stories should be told. The new documentary style. It's difficult to say if it will really be good, but the trailer is magnificently done!

I feel like I paid 13 bucks to see a teaser version of the 4 hour Apple+ director's cut.

I do want to see the directors cut. and I would probably subscribe to Apple+ just for a month to see it. So yeah they suckered me in.

I want to watch that opening scene on repeat.

But in the 2.5 hour version of this movie, I failed to make any connection to any of the characters. So watching it, it was just a bunch of stuff happening. I felt no investment or reason to feel anything during good times nor bad for any of the characters. Those things were just things happening.

Hopefully the 4+ hour version of this movie fixes that, because as it stands I was expecting more. This movie is a bit of a let down.

Basically a 2hr 30min montage!

Unfortunately a very superficial film without much suspense. In addition, the film has many errors that have already been corrected by historians.

Great but not fantastic. Full marks for the battle scenes, costumes, sets and attention to detail plus the fact Ridley filmed this movie in 62 days. It held my attention and was not dull by any means. However, it didn’t quite hit the mark with me, as much as The Last Duel or Gladiator. Rushed? Possibly. Having said that, perhaps the extra hour in the director’s cut on Apple TV+ will fill those holes for me. Undeniably a Ridley Scott movie of epic proportions. 7/10