Ridley Scott is back with a new epic film featuring Napoleon Bonaparte played by Joaquin Phoenix.

This film follows the life of Napoleon Bonaparte from the beginning through to his death. We meet Josephine (Vanessa Kirby), his future wife who could not give him what he wanted most of all, an heir.

We see a bunch of excellent battles with Napoleon leading the French armies against his multitude of enemies. The battle scenes are perhaps the best scenes of the film. Sadly, the best scene was the scene on the ice, which was spoiled in the trailer.

This movie looks amazing. It is shot beautifully. The action scenes are special. The costumes are perfect.

The acting is decent, but maybe not to the level that one would expect. Joaquin Phoenix is good, but it is curious that he never once attempts to have a French accent. I wonder if they were just incapable of doing the accent properly. Not doing it would be better than doing it badly.

Unfortunately, there are more problems with the film. The story just does not work for me. It feels as if it is nothing more than a series of events from Napoleon’s life. There is just not enough of a throughline in the film to make these moments feel like anything but a scrapbook.

I think the film wanted that throughline to be the relationship between Napoleon and Josephine, but that relationship just does not work fully. It felt very inconsistent.

Then, this film is two hours and forty-three minutes long and it absolutely feels like it. I was checking my phone for the time several times during the runtime. I have had films that were this long or even longer that felt like time flew by because the pacing was great. This one was not paced well because I was bored in several situations and that should not be happening.

There are positives here, but there is just something missing from the story that does not allow this to pop the way it should have. I think there could have been a better version of Napoleon.

2.8 stars