Napoleon

Synopsis

Napoleon Bonaparte rises from artillery officer to Emperor of France, conquers much of Europe, makes a series of increasingly questionable strategic decisions and eventually discovers that invading Russia in winter may not have been his strongest idea.

On paper, this should have been brilliant.

One of history’s most fascinating figures.

Huge battles.

Political intrigue.

Military strategy.

Joaquin Phoenix.

Ridley Scott.

What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot, as it turns out.

Review

I really wanted to like Napoleon.

I genuinely did.

The ingredients were all there.

A fascinating historical figure.

A world-class actor.

A renowned director.

A huge budget.

The sort of project that should have been impossible to get wrong.

Yet somehow it managed it.

The film looks fantastic.

The battle scenes are impressive.

The costumes are excellent.

The production values are undeniable.

And yet, despite all of that, I found myself increasingly disconnected from what was happening on screen.

The problem wasn’t the acting.

The problem wasn’t the visuals.

The problem was that I simply didn’t care.

And that’s a serious issue when the film is literally named after the main character.

The more I watched, the more the entire thing started to remind me of a poorly governed transformation programme.

The kind where everybody involved is clearly talented.

The budget is enormous.

The objectives sound impressive.

The executive sponsors are fully committed.

But somewhere along the way, nobody stops to ask whether the thing being delivered is actually what people wanted.

Instead, everybody keeps moving forward because they assume somebody else must know what they’re doing.

The result is a collection of individually impressive components that never quite come together into a successful outcome.

The battle scenes are impressive.

The cinematography is impressive.

The cast is impressive.

The budget was definitely impressive.

The overall delivery?

Not so much.

Then came the moment that finally broke me.

The Ice Cube Incident.

At one point the film presents people sitting in the Egyptian desert casually drinking beverages containing ice.

Ice.

In the desert.

During a military campaign.

Now before the history experts start sharpening their keyboards, I understand that obtaining ice was technically possible during the period.

That’s not the point.

The point is that my brain immediately stopped following the story and started performing a logistics assessment.

Where did the ice come from?

Who transported it?

Who approved the budget?

What was the supply chain?

Who was responsible for cold-storage operations?

Had somebody established an Ice Centre of Excellence?

Why was this apparently easier than invading Egypt?

Once you’re asking infrastructure questions instead of paying attention to the plot, the film has already lost.

And Napoleon lost me completely.

I wasn’t watching the story anymore.

I was trying to reverse-engineer the ice logistics strategy.

Shortly afterwards, I turned it off.

Which is perhaps the most damning thing I can say.

I finished Masters of the Universe.

I did not finish Napoleon.

Final Verdict

Napoleon should have been fascinating.

Instead, it became one of the very few films I’ve willingly abandoned halfway through.

The greatest military leader of his generation deserved a better film.

Joaquin Phoenix deserved a better script.

And the audience deserved a clearer objective.

This is a perfect example of what happens when people are allowed to run free, assume they know what everyone wants, and continue delivering without challenge or governance.

Everything looks busy.

Everything looks expensive.

Everything appears to be moving forward.

Yet somehow nobody notices that the outcome isn’t working.

Then when expectations aren’t met, everyone starts looking for somebody else to blame.

Meanwhile the people who raised concerns at the beginning are quietly sitting in the corner saying:

“I did mention this in the design workshop.”

Completely Unqualified Verdict:

This wasn’t a film. It was a poorly governed transformation programme with a large budget, unclear success criteria and an unexplained ice supply chain.

I came for Napoleon.

I left wondering who approved the refrigeration strategy.