Alright, so lets sum up what this movie is about, exactly.

Lets ignore the history, the lack of authenticity, the lack of accuracy, lets ignore ALL of that. I know a movie director will not get right the square formation or the specific maneuvers of the battle of Austerlitz, and frankly, Scott didnt even try. Watch Waterloo (1970) or even the 2002 TV SHOW for a better portrayal of that. Lets ignore that.

Lets focus on the basics.

Character development: A movie is a story, told about characters, characters who are historical figures, characters who we need to UNDERSTAND, to empathize with, to hate, to FEEL. We have to understand them in order to feel these things. Do we understand this Napoleon? No. Joaquin Pheonix is simply NOT the guy for this movie, I am sorry. He simply isnt. Do we get his family background, where he is from? A corsican backwater? Do we understand him? do we feel him? Do we know his family, his friends? his aspirations? his fears? do we know him? truly know him? No. We do not.

Is this movie about Josephine? No, do we understand her? still no.

WHAT THE HELL is this movie about? a lovestory between napoleon and josephine? IF so then why not change the name to be about this? Lets say that is the case, is this a good love story? Still NO. not pride and prejudice, not jane eyre, nope, not at all. Very little romance, very little engaging dialogue, very little quotable moments.

How about the plot? Its BORING. jesus christ is it boring. Its 6 or 7 battle scenes filled with stuff between napoleon and josephine and some other stuff that leaves things lacking. Plot is boring.

Audio is lacking, sometimes in the movie i could barely hear what the hell they were saying. Who did this shit? Is this a joke?

I am not going to go into the battles or accuracies or whatever. Who cares. I dont care about accuracy, i just want a good movie. This ISNT a good movie, period. You simply cannot tell a good story about Napoleon with only 2.5 hours. You could maybe do a good job if you just talk about say, Toulon, the Coup, Austerlitz, Waterloo, or maybe JUST about him and josephine, or maybe just about a small segment of his life. This movie tries to cover way too many things, battles, Napoleon, his rise and downfall, his relationship with josephine, and it falls flat on ALL OF THEM.

You want to demonize Napoleon? FINE, go ahead! Its ok to have an opinion about him, but your utter ridiculous distortion is just that, complete rubbish and distortion. Did you bother with his domestic reforms, the Napoleonic Code? or the infrastructure program? Or anything else he did besides military? Did you bother explaining why he became the emperor, the plebiscite? Did you bother explaining the assignation attempt on him ? What about his family? Did you bother with the family and the friends and marshals? No. You did not. You did not care about history, or Napoleon, nor did you bother with telling his story, because you dont care. You simply cannot be bothered with these details. Who cares right? After all, i wasnt there! Neither were you! WHO CARES ABOUT HISTORY!?!?!

Captivating to say the least. The story alone makes you pause and reflect on what it means to be in a situation where you are truly and utterly vulnerable to the nature of the climate, your own humanity, and spirituality. This movie was made with all the respect for the families and every attention to detail shines through within each scene.

The cinematography juxtaposes the height and mass of the mountains compared to the shelter of the plane. You can’t help but be breathless with each struggle the characters face, and it’s almost other worldly that this actually happened. Every actor brought their characters to life, and even the voice actors in the dubbed version gave just as much to the story. Some dubbed movies just don’t work, but this one I believe did. Well done to the mixing engineers for sure.

With each scene showing how they survived (no spoilers), I was glad and relieved they didn’t go all out with the gore and it again showed respect from the director, actors, and everyone involved. You get what is happening without seeing something that would take away from the movie as a whole. Sometimes less really is more.

Another point that I appreciated is each character is seen as a person and not just background. They’re all depicted as brave, honest, willing, intelligent, and most of all heroic in the face of their worst fears come true. Of course their are the main leaders of the group that shine through more, but they still sit evenly when all together pushing to survive.

Five stars for sure, and I would even go out on a limb and place this movie in a top spot on my favorites of all time. Not sure when or if I’ll ever watch it again, but I know that seeing the horrific real past through the lens of this movie was nothing short of inspiring.

I am really unable to rate this film as to whether it was a good or a bad film. Hence the one star. We tried as hard as we could, but we just couldn't make out the dialogue of these 2 'great' actors mumbling their way through a script. All I can say about it was that it was a mumble-fest. Sadly no subtitles to help us out.
Are American actors incapable of opening their mouths and projecting ? Yes, I know it's a trans-Atlantic thing, but surely making oneself heard and understood is part of the craft.
We gave up after one hour what a waste of time. Still as long as they got paid.