I conquer2/28/2024 ![]() MORE FROM FORBES 'Killers Of The Flower Moon' Is Sadly Another 2023 Big-Budget Flop By Mark Hughes Only the barest bones of the story survive when deprived of what makes those moments part of a life and of an era, when it becomes simply “this happened, and then this happened.” And it’s crazy that I’m saying this despite the film being 2 hours and 38 minutes long, which would normally be plenty of time to tell everything necessary for a story. Otherwise, she is treated as almost a prop in this over-edited version of the film, given no room to act upon events or develop a deeper arc for herself. Her apparent power over Napoleon is narrow and largely depicted as manipulating his desire, usually with a satirical undercurrent. Too often, Joséphine spends scenes alternating between lightly catching her breath in almost tearful, sorrowful surprise, and lightly catching her breath in bitter, knowing awareness. Vanessa Kirby elevates an underdeveloped character by infusing her with the weariness of a woman who is all too familiar with the endless power struggles and rising or falling fortunes of someone like herself. In both contexts, Phoenix brings an intentional lack of self-awareness that sells the characterization - historically accurate or not, it’s funny and well played. He becomes stoic and pompous when considering his war plans or implementing them. Clumsy, fawning, and melodramatic to the point of farce, Phoenix’s portrayal of the romance is perhaps only a few slapstick pratfalls away from Charlie Chaplin. The engine driving this tale is Napoleon’s relationship with Joséphine, which proceeds in an uncomfortable (to the point it often feels cringy, intentionally so) and humorous series of meetings and separations. Again, I assume the 4 hour 10 minute version premiering on AppleTV+ includes greater exploration of the initial outcomes and then subsequent events leading to reversals, but that doesn’t save the theatrical version from the whiplash suffered from its rapid turns of direction at its own expense. ![]() One situation will transpire, only to completely undo itself moments later and undercut whatever tension and crisis the story just spent time setting up. MORE FROM FORBES 'The Hunger Games' Prequel Is Another Failed Franchise Relaunch In 2023 By Mark Hughes ![]() Otherwise, the movie is an absurdist comedy deconstructing a famous historic love story, yet it only hits only the highlights and robs its leads of greater potential in such a truncated form. But they feel disconnected from most of the rest of the film besides their literal technical place in the timeline of events. If you want those sorts of action sequences, you’ll find several to love here. Napoleon does this in top tier fashion, mind you. It’s impressive in scale and depiction, but I’m honestly weary of watching movies or TV shows of any genre with two big armies crashing into one another in “dirt on the camera realism” scenes, because it’s rarely connected to anything meaningful in the story and is purely showing off big cool fights in what’s now a stereotypical manner. Why are we watching this or that battle? What precisely are we meant to feel, beyond what we might otherwise experience watching an ambitious action-driven large-scale war sequence depicted in what we can only assume is a hyper-realistic manner? I know I’m watching a particular battle and I recognize it’s particular role in the framework of Napoleon’s advance to power and ultimate downfall, but the choices of what to portray and how to portray it feel largely unexplored when removed from a larger and richer context that I assume (because watching the film, I was constantly aware of what was missing) appears in the finished vision. MORE FROM FORBES 5 Must-See Films On The 60th Anniversary Of JFK Assassination By Mark Hughes The structure of the film is such that you just intuitively sense you’re only watching the backbones of a story, with connective tissue missing and much of the large-scale war sequencing feeling randomly inserted into a satire of royal history and love affairs. It is glaringly obvious I was watching only half of a movie, even if I hadn’t known a full-length version would mercifully appear on AppleTV later this year. This is an odd film to review, for many reasons.
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