Joaquin Phoenix gives the absolute worst performance of his career as Napoleon Buonaparte, choosing to portray one of history’s most famously charismatic leaders, as a wooden cutout. No movie these days would be complete without Reddit/Marvel-tier quipped dialogue, and this screenplay provides it in spades. Many of the events that would naturally adapt to the big screen are skipped in favor of shots of Phoenix crawling under tables like some fucked up dog. No mention is made of Italy, and Spain and Haiti are skipped over as to avoid portraying the subject in any kind of negative light. Irresponsible and reactionary filmmaking shines through in a script that truly feels like it was written by chatgpt. The film concludes with him suddenly dying in a part that reminded me of the poochy “my planet needs me” bit. Do not waste your time. I was expecting a cheesy Hollywood retelling and it didn’t even do that, despite having more than enough source material to do so.
I have more complaints about this movie than I feel would be polite to heap on people that I actually like, but for everyone’s sake, either avoid this movie in favor of Sergei Bondarchuk’s Waterloo, or if it’s too late for you, go watch it to get the taste out of your mouth. It’s free on youtube, and it’s pretty good quality.
Rod Steiger’s performance as Napoleon is regarded as hit or miss, but I personally feel it gets across Napoleon’s charisma, mental acuity, and mercurial temper perfectly.
And importantly, unlike Napoleon, which I felt was trying to be three different types of movie at once and ultimately had no real identity, Waterloo is very tightly focused, and also unlike Napoleon, is (for a film anyway) extremely well-researched and historically accurate.
Then of course my favorite part, the sheer number of extras the production pulled together for the big battle. Napoleon’s battle scenes were a travesty, resembling not at all the actual history and being so much smaller in scope. Does anybody know if Scott used live extras for the battle scenes? I can’t be fucked to check. At any rate, Bondarchuk pulled in something like 15,000 people for the battle scenes, and the way they’re shot gives the impression of an honest to god Napoleonic army up on screen.
Most importantly though, Waterloo is actually entertaining, which Napoleon was not. And if you ask me that’s the one unforgiveable sin for any movie. How can you fuck up making an actually entertaining movie about such a huge personality as Napoleon? I’m not even gonna get into the weird psychosexual stuff, or Letizia Bonaparte being turned into a creepier version of Barry Lyndon’s mom. Just go watch Waterloo, or Barry Lyndon, or anything else.
Soviet war movies have that special “let’s go for the most massive scenes we can make” thing. “Liberation” (1971) has absolutely insane scenes where hundreds of soldiers, tanks and artillery pieces were mobilized to recreate WW2 battles, some in their historic places. They even went as far as building replicas of German WW2 tanks because they couldn’t find working original ones, they also used post-WW2 tanks but this is normal for the time, like in the movie “Patton”, the Germans in Africa are using Patton tanks painted with German markings lol.
In Liberation they paid HUGE attention to uniforms and the actors themselves, Stalin looks like Stalin, Rokossovsky looks like Rokossovsky, Hitler looks like Hitler, Mussolini looks like Mussolini, Zhukov looks like Zhukov. The russians speak Russian and the germans speak German, it’s amazing how well it is done.
That movie covers a lot of WW2, even Tito and Vlasov make an appearance, it’s just brilliant.
I’d never heard of this one, I’ll have to give it a watch! Sounds like it’s exactly my thing. And yes, bless Cold War-era Russian directors, their attention to detail is astonishing
It’s actually a movie series, like 4 or 5 of them. They’re all on Youtube too!
I love that movie! So, do good! Stieger and Plummer are perfect
Umm aktually according to rotten tomatoes Waterloo has only 27% rotten tomatoes rating.
Further proof that RT must be scourged from this earth
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