Man oh man this had major feels of Killer of the Flower Moon to me. You have a fascinating piece of history. You go to make a movie about it. Has the potential to be INCREDIBLE, and the director focuses, IMO, on the wrong shit.
This movie was about the famed French leader Napoleon. A man who fought and won many battles as an Army commander and worked his way ALL the way up to the leader of France. This has all the making for a some really great storytelling. Instead, the movie felt like a movie that was a love story between him and his wife in which they threw in a few scenes that reminded us, OH YEAH HEY BTW THIS IS WHO HE WAS.
I have no idea what he director took this angle. Not nearly enough battle scenes, battle decisions or planning, WHY these battles were important, the back story of these battles. There was SOOOO I mean SOOOO much left out on the history of France with the other countries, who they were at the time, why they were fighting. So much was left out completely about who this man was a person. OUTSIDE of his love life.
This movie I thought was going to teach about France, who they were , who they wanted to be, about the battles that were fought, the difficulty of them, the strategy, more into his mind as a leader and human. Instead again, I got just a whole lunch of love drama. And that is not what I signed up for with this movie. I did learn SOME, and their were SOME battle scenes (cut way too short and not nearly fun enough) and the acting by Joaquin Phoenix was superb, but in my opinion a major disappointment. It didn’t suck but it was just a middle of the road SOLID FILM, that from the previews, had all the makings of EXCELLENT. That is a review.