{"id":4282,"date":"2023-12-12T17:16:50","date_gmt":"2023-12-12T17:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/?p=4282"},"modified":"2023-12-13T15:17:56","modified_gmt":"2023-12-13T15:17:56","slug":"napoleon-theatrical-cut-2023-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/2023\/12\/12\/napoleon-theatrical-cut-2023-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Napoleon Theatrical Cut (2023) Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Joaquin Phoenix in Napoleon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The now twenty-eight feature films of Ridley Scott vary quite heavily in quality. He\u2019s made a few indisputable masterworks (Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise<\/em>), a couple of stinkers (Robin Hood,<\/em> Exodus<\/em>), and a wide selection of films that range from being near-masterpieces at best to mediocre at worst. Whatever their overall quality may be, Ridley Scott\u2019s films usually share a precise and refined filmmaking style and endlessly striking visuals. His lesser films can be viewed as mere exercises in style that lack identifiable humanity and relatable human emotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scott\u2019s latest, the two-and-a-half-hour theatrical cut of Napoleon, <\/em>is an example of mediocrity. There is a supposed four-hour-plus cut of the film in the works that could potentially rectify the theatrical cut\u2019s primary faults, however. The theatrical cut, as it stands, showcases many of Scott\u2019s strengths while equally revealing his weaknesses. The battle sequences, costumes, sets, and Dariusz Wolksi\u2019s cinematography are all examples of impeccable craftsmanship, but the film\u2019s inability to tell a story to which its audience can emotionally connect leaves a bit too much to be desired. Hopefully, the future extended cut will allow more room for what the theatrical cut sorely lacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film\u2019s presentation of the life story of the legendary French general and politician never feels alive. It resembles an abridged and dispassionate history lesson that merely skims the surface of Napoleon\u2019s character and his accomplishments on the battlefield during the late 18th<\/sup> and early 19th<\/sup> centuries. The movie very much wants us to believe that Napoleon (Joaquin Phoenix) is largely driven by his obsession with his wife, Josephine (Vanessa Kirby). The film makes it clear that Napoleon wants to conquer and control Josephine as much as he does the world, but it doesn\u2019t explore their characters and their relationship enough for it to be felt by the audience as well. The constant time-jumping of the film only allows its events and characters to be understood on a basic intellectual level, but they are never truly communicated on an emotional one. You understand that Napoleon is an endlessly ambitious, obsessive, and unsatisfied man, but you never come close to understanding why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Scarpa\u2019s screenplay would have been more successful if it had been narrowed down to focus on and explore just one time period of Napoleon\u2019s life rather than sweepingly covering years of it through the presentation of brief and dramatically soft snippets of time. Either that or it simply should have been retooled and extended to be an eight-hour miniseries. The film suffers due to its over-ambition within a feature-length format and it doesn\u2019t have enough time for its characters and themes to be properly developed. You never fully get to know who anyone is or what the true significance of each time period the film covers may be. As a result, the film fails to be fully engrossing, no matter how grand Scott and his team\u2019s filmmaking is. If you\u2019re like me and you\u2019re not a particularly huge history buff who already knows the subject matter, it\u2019s quite easy to be predominantly untouched by the film\u2019s epic aspirations. I would like to believe that the future four-hour-plus cut might fix some of these problems, but that remains to be seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this cut of the film, the performances come across as rather lackluster. Phoenix has a few moments that show off his signature deep commitment and emotional vulnerability, but, overall, is given little else to do but exhibit a pompous, stuffy, and unrelatable demeanor. The audience never gets a sense of who Napoleon truly is behind his uniform and endless public posturing. While his subtlety is admirable, Phoenix\u2019s work feels surface-driven and incomplete. Kirby\u2019s performance suffers even more than Phoenix\u2019s. It\u2019s frustrating to watch her in the film because as soon as you start to get a feel for Josephine\u2019s character and a sense of the high quality of Kirby\u2019s work, the film jumps ahead another few years without further developing or paying respect to what came before it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The theatrical cut of Napoleon <\/em>bites off quite a bit more than it can chew. While its ambitions are exciting in theory, the film\u2019s execution is too dry and, frankly, too narratively sloppy for it to reach its desired effect. The talent involved in the film should have produced a better movie. Hopefully, an extended cut will eventually offer this flawed film a brighter future. As it currently exists, however, it\u2019s a bit of a mess that merely shows glimpses of the greatness that it could have achieved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GRADE: C<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The now twenty-eight feature films of Ridley Scott vary quite heavily in quality. He\u2019s made a few indisputable masterworks (Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise), a couple of stinkers (Robin Hood, Exodus), and a wide selection of films that range from being near-masterpieces at best to mediocre at worst. Whatever their overall quality may be, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4282"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4300,"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4282\/revisions\/4300"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}