We round up the reviews for Ridley Scott’s latest film starring Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby.
The Guardian: ***** “Phoenix is the key to it all: a performance as robust as the glass of burgundy he knocks back: preening, brooding, seething and triumphing.”
BBC.com: **** “Scene by scene, his proper, old-fashioned historical epic is terrific fun. But it lacks insights into who Napoleon is or what he wants, where he comes from or why he is such a success. Nor does it delve below the surface of the geopolitics around him. It is never clear why he is fighting a particular battle or signing a particular treaty, and because it isn’t clear, it is difficult to care about their outcomes.”
Evening Standard: **** “Phoenix, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny and chilling in the same scene, is as compelling as he always is: even almost saving risible lines like “Destiny has brought me this lamp chop!””
Variety: “Whenever the director and his protagonist find themselves on the battlefield, “Napoleon” reminds what a pantheon-level talent Scott is. He orchestrates staggeringly complex scenes in such a way that we can intuit the broad strategy, even as he scars us with horrifying details, like a drummer vaporized by a cannon blast or a massive army sunk to the bottom of a frozen lake at the Battle of Austerlitz. Still, the movie may well send audiences back to their history books for an explanation of something so fundamental as why the French dictator is warmongering at all.”
Rolling Stone: “You begin the film chuckling over the idea that Scott might see something of himself in this legendary tyrant. You leave wondering whether he just views this historical strongman as nothing more than an excuse to dress up actors and blow shit up.”
The Independent: **** “Napoleon is a traditional, historical epic rendered in Scott’s own brawny, cannily modern style. David Scarpa’s script matches those ambitions, though it’s at its weakest when it bends to narrative convenience.”
Empire: “Scott’s entertaining and plausible interpretation of Napoleon, ultimately, is that — like many a great film director — he was something of a micromanager.”
The Review Geek: “Time will tell where this ranks in the filmography of Ridley Scott. It isn’t a misfire, but it is a nice biopic if it came out in the early 2000s. For two and a half hours, we see both Napoleon on the battlefield, and then we see him at his home in a failing marriage—nothing really in between. We don’t get to know Napoleon, the man, or what makes him tick. It’s kind of his greatest hits on display here.”
The Telegraph: **** “The director’s 28th feature is a magnificent slab of dad cinema, with Phoenix a startling emperor and Vanessa Kirby brilliant as his wife.”
BFI.org.uk: “Phoenix never quite brings Bonaparte to life as a knowable being – an all but impossible task, surely – but he does flesh him out in interesting ways. He gives him the heavy, leggy stride of a seasoned horseman; emphasises his languid heavy-lidded gaze. At the start, Phoenix’s American-accented delivery has a light, Malkovichian airiness, becoming more harshly forceful as the film progresses. As Josephine, the silky voiced Vanessa Kirby doesn’t quite go through comparable changes but overall, offers a richer, more intriguing performance as a woman who has learned to use her sexuality to survive the Terror, and who seems startled by the complex feelings she develops as the adored and abused spouse of a self-made legend: an extreme prototype of the modern trophy wife.”
Radio Times: **** “Scott’s direction shows a gift for remaining coherent amid the chaos of battle. As audiences are thrillingly thrust between cannons and cavalry, the brutal realities hit hard, especially when the grisliest end of all is met by a horse early on. In particular, the frozen surface of Satschan ponds, seen during the Battle of Austerlitz, gives Scott and cinematographer Dariusz Wolski the perfect canvas to paint some of the film’s most striking images.”
The Daily Mail: *** “This movie is gaining more than an hour of material when it moves to the small screen, so perhaps that will help us better grasp the complexities of Napoleon’s character. But as epics go, Scott and Phoenix teamed up to much greater effect in the wonderful Gladiator, 23 years ago.”
iNews: *** “In many ways it is Kirby’s film: she is sly and charming, and simultaneously desperate, never letting us forget the precariousness of her position nor her powerful instincts to survive. Then it’s some politicking and a lot of meticulously choreographed battles, which are easily good enough to rival the best ever on-screen battle scenes including Scott’s own Battle in Germania in Gladiator (2000).”
Napoleon is out in cinemas now.