NAPOLEON REVIEW: Blunt-force charisma from Joaquin Phoenix in Ridley Scott’s dark, epic biopic.

Spanning 32 years, from the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 to its title character’s death on St Helena in 1821, it casts Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise, reign and downfall as both a prickly psychodrama and a sweeping military epic, in which the intimate lives of its central players and the fate of France itself become instantly and anxiously entwined.

Napoleon himself is played with startling blunt-force charisma by Joaquin Phoenix, who is working again with Scott for the first time since 2000’s Gladiator. Phoenix’s undisguised soft Californian accent is one of a number of details that might irk historical sticklers – television’s Dan Snow has already chimed in with a list of inaccuracies, to which Scott’s not unreasonable response was “get a life”. But on screen it’s oddly ideal, reinforcing the idea that this Corsican roughneck can never fully settle into the role for which history has him picked out.

We get the measure of the man almost instantly at the Siege of Toulon, as the French Republican forces lay siege to the British-occupied harbour fort. In the dead of night, as Napoleon leads the advance, a cannonball tears through the shoulder of his horse – the film earns its 15 certificate fast – though almost before he hits the ground he hurriedly barks “I’m OK,” and strides on, shaken but resolute, and smeared with the blood of his steed.

The whole sequence is astonishing – mounted on a scale and pegged out with a clarity that makes the filmmaking itself feel like the work of a supreme military tactician. But extraordinarily, Scott keeps on bettering it.

I saw Napoleon on Thanksgiving afternoon in Fort Worth, with a rather intimate crowd about ten other people in the theater besides Nina and I. Fortunately, globally, the film is doing quite well, because it wasn’t going to make back much of its rumored $200 million budget from that multiplex! I’m surprised to see the film is getting far harsher reviews in America than in England (the above passage is from the London Telegraph). Yes, like Scott’s Gladiator, Napoleon is first and foremost a movie, and like most historic-themed epic films, it plays very fast and loose with the facts. (For example, yes, Napoleon was sent to Egypt, but no, he didn’t shell the pyramids for kicks and grins along the way). But it’s definitely an epic well worth seeing on the big screen while you have the chance. (Though I’m looking forward to the four-hour plus cut that’s allegedly coming to Apple TV next year.)