‘Napoleon’ largely celebrated in reviews: a “bombastic” epic of style over substance

nme.com:

Napoleon, with generally favourable reviews across the board.The historical drama stars Joaquin Phoenix in the titular role as Napoleon Bonaparte, the military mastermind and Emperor of France.

It spans 32 years from the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 to Napoleon’s death on St Helena in 1821, and explores significant battles as well as the romantic turmoil with his wife Joséphine de Beauharnais.Many have praised director Scott for crafting the kind of bombastic spectacle favoured in late ’50s and early ’60s Hollywood, noting in particular the technical and theatrical skill enacted for the sweeping, bloody battle scenes.

On the flip side, critics have said that the film fails in digging deep enough into the psychology of a war tyrant and his love affair.Variety‘s Peter Debruge celebrated Scott’s visual prowess, writing of the battle scenes in Toulon: “It’s not often that a filmmaker manages to deliver an image of war that audiences haven’t seen before, and this early example sets a high bar.”“From the master of the modern epic, comes an undeniably impressive technical achievement,” he wrote elsewhere, before noting Phoenix’s “oddly anti-charismatic” portrayal of the military tactician.Debruge concluded that Napoleon “seems less enamoured with its subject than any previous telling of his exploits, referencing the 3 million lives lost under his campaigns”, and that Scott’s “desire to re-create some of history’s most notorious conflicts” means that “psychology is sacrificed for the sake of spectacle”.The Telegraph‘s Robbie Collin praised in a four-star review Scott’s “magnificently hewn slab of dad cinema” with its lead actor playing Napoleon with “startling blunt-force charisma”.