Napoleon (2023) Movie Review: A Passable, But Disappointing Biopic

The new biopic Napoleon, starring Joaquin Phoenix falls short of having any substance.

One of the most highly anticipated biopics of the year is Napoleon (2023). We always see these kinds of movies this time of the year, do a killing at the box office, and in award season. Joaquin Phoenix is one of my favorite working actors and a lot of others’ favorites as well. So it took a lot out of me not to like Napoleon.

Even Director Ridley Scott has made plenty of great films in the past and has been working for what seems like forever—making Blade Runner in the 80s, Alien in the 70s, and Gladiator in the 2000s. He has his fair share of great movies on his belt, but he also has some stinkers as of late, such as the House of Gucci movie, which was a flop. 

It seems that his down streak will continue with Napoleon (2023), a film that performed decently at the box office but did not do good with critics. It is currently sitting at 58% on Rotten Tomatoes. Overall, to me, the film feels very eventful. Things happen, and each scene doesn’t feel like it’s working towards something larger. 

Moving towards the plot, we see Napoleon and his many accomplishments in this film. Unfortunately, there isn’t as much time spent on the strategy of his battles, or the battles themselves. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of time showing the battles he was in, but seemingly not enough. Most of the film, or at least what sticks out the most, is Napoleon’s personal life. The focus is mostly on his love life and specifically his time with his wife. At first, it was interesting to see their unique dynamic, but it got dull pretty quickly. 

Minor spoiler here for those who are unfamiliar with Napoleon’s history or want to go into the film with no knowledge of him. Eventually, Napoleon gets exiled to an island. This happens twice in real life and in the film. As I watched the film, I felt like there was supposed to be a larger build to this. To me, it felt like it came out of nowhere. It kind of just happened. The stakes did not feel super high before then.

Some of that might be history that I’m missing, but in the film, I did expect a little bit more tension. Most of the time, we see them go toward his eventual divorce from his wife. As I said before, seeing them together was fine at first, but it seemed just like another eventual bad marriage you’ve seen in any other movie. 

The first island he gets exiled to, he escapes by getting the people there to help him. This was something I thought they would go deep into the film. But it was very short in hindsight. It might just be me wanting to see it more drawn out, but I thought it would’ve been very interesting to see. 

Unfortunately, that makes me feel the film lacked a lot of substance. I didn’t feel like there was an underlying message, and if there was, it went over my head. It was very eventful, which kept me from feeling something bigger.

A couple of my gripes aside, let’s get into the positives. The set design is fantastic. This is something Ridley Scott has done very well in nearly all of his movies. It reminded me of another period piece that Scott has done recently called The Last Duel, which also had a great set design. This is important as, without set design in period pieces like this, you don’t feel like you’re there back in time. It seems that production designers are one of Ridley Scott’s strong suits, as this goes back to his early films, such as Alien and Blade Runner, which both had exceptional production designs.

Another strong suit is Joaquin Phoenix’s acting. In just about every role I have seen him in, he has always crushed it. It seems that he did a lot of work to make his voice and inflection sound like Napoleon, as many reports said that Napoleon spoke in a very demeaning, calm, and simple tone, and he did just that.

They did a great job of making him look older as time went on in the film, and Phoenix it a great job of portraying that with his acting. It’s quite a shame that his acting was good, and if the film were better, it definitely would’ve excelled a lot more. Nonetheless, it is good to see Phoenix in a high-profile movie like this again.

Beyond Phoenix, we have Vanessa Kirby, who played Napoleon’s wife, Josephine. You might recognize her from The Crown series on Netflix. She also did a pretty good job in her role. Unfortunately, she wasn’t given a lot of great material to work with as far as lines go, but she did a great job. I didn’t necessarily love her character in the film, but her acting was there. Kirby and Phoenix had chemistry together, but at the same time, that shouldn’t have been the focal point of the film. 

Something they could’ve done is cut down on the scenes between Napoleon and his wife and Napoleon’s personal life in general. I feel that while it is interesting to see what he did behind closed doors, it’s more interesting to see his accomplishments in war and battle. I mean, we’re still talking about this guy, and it’s been hundreds of years since he died.  I believe that’s because of the things he did on the battlefield, not necessarily in the bedroom.

I know that Ridley Scott has gone on record to say that he didn’t care if the film is historically inaccurate, or when his films are completely historically inaccurate in general. But sometimes you need to at least have a little bit of accuracy or films like this become off-kilter.

That might be one of the biggest downfalls is the fact that he didn’t care about that as many people will leave the theater angry that it’s not as accurate as it should be. Not saying you need to be 100% accurate, but at least to the point where it seems believable. If not, you’re getting close to historical fiction at that point. You might as well go all out. 

The battles in the film were a highlight, and every time there was action it was appealing to my eyes. The way it was shot,  the music, the acting, it was all spectacular. The scenes felt big and stood out from when we just saw Napoleon talking to his wife back at his house. This is when the film excels when it knows what the audience wants and gives it to us. Unfortunately, for a lot of these battles in hindsight, there isn’t a ton of tension built up to them, so they don’t feel as important as they should be. 

For example, when Napoleon had one of his last battles before he was exiled, I saw that this might be one of the turning points in the film, but it felt like another battle.

The only reason I knew it wasn’t was because of knowing the history behind it. If they spent more time talking a little bit about the history or stuff leading up to these battles, it might’ve made them feel a little bit more important. Some people might not view it that way, but for me, that’s definitely how I felt. But regardless, when we got to the battles, they still were fun to watch and very well filmed and executed.

That might seem like I’m being too hard on this film, but at the same time, with the talent involved, it definitely should’ve been a lot better. The film itself is nowhere near terrible or unwatchable,e like many people are labeling it. But it is a disappointment that we didn’t get a better product out of such stars, such as Joaquin Phoenix, and Ridley Scott. 

It looks like there will be a four-hour extended cut that will be released on Apple TV once the film is done in theaters, so maybe we’ll get some kind of better closure on the film. I might enjoy the extended cut a lot more than the theatrical cut. Maybe a second watch will let me just try to enjoy the film for what it is, so it might grow on me, but only time will tell. At least we all have the extended cut to watch at home to look forward to on Apple TV.