Napolean

I find Napoleon was/is a very easy film to determine my opinion and thoughts for. That's not always the case, trust me! 

The new historical epic from hallowed director, Ridley Scott, seemingly promises to be epic in both scope and execution. Certainly bigger than his nuanced medieval triple-story, The Last Duel, from 2021. 

Napoleon Bonaparte is one of history's most influential and recognizable characters. An emperor with advanced war strategies and a lover of France; he has a lot of life to cover and it's been no secret that Scott - lover of Director Cuts to many of his films - has a 4+ hour version of this coming to Apple TV+ at some point down the line. 

I fully reserve the right to alter my score (or at least update this review with an Appendix) after that comes out because that future vision is clouding this current version. It's not drastically detrimental; I still liked Napoleon a lot. But the whole thing seems to have a crisis of rushing against the clock...picking out the most important tidbits of his history and mashing them together between epic battle sequences that we would expect from Scott. 

The result is a most-likely fantastic, but very long film, truncated into a merely "good" one, with moments of greatness. Depending what the additional 1+ hour of content is, I could hypothesize that I'd like Napoleon enough for it to make my Top 10, which is an impressive feat this year. However, a 4-hour runtime is simply too much for theaters and the semi-bastardized version we're left with is continuously interesting, awe-inspiring in its grandiose battles, features a top-tier level of production value (cinematography and original score were highlights for me), and several worthwhile performances. Those elements shine through the disjointed nature of the narrative that jumps years ahead at a time, leaves threads hanging, and ultimately doesn't do justice to someone as gargantuan as Napoleon. 

So yeah, it's an easy decision for me in terms of scoring and an awkward sale to recommend this in theaters. On one hand, the battle sequences are violent and brutally big on the large screen - the iced-over lake sequence is one of the year's most memorable - but when there's a superior version of this coming out in months(?), it's hard for me to say you should rush out and see it. 

Rapid Rath's Review Score | 7/10