Ryan May

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I just can’t get onboard with this film whatsoever. And for the first time in my cinema history, I left early. If you know Ridley Scott and other films of his such as Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven, then this film will likely leave you even more unimpressed. The trailer would make you believe this is somewhat of a war movie, it is not. A tragedy given that this is based on a real person in history, and not the fictitious stories like in Gladiator, one of my favourite films of all time. This is more so a biopic of Napoleon and his love affair with Josephine. And in no way shape or form depicts Napoleon as the charismatic leader that took control of most of Europe between 1805 and 1815. Rather a grumpy, solemn little man with a childish petulance. Not at all endearing. And quite frankly, boring. The Battle of Austerlitz doesn’t reflect anything remotely historically accurate. The fight scenes show lines of men charging at each other with bayonet-less rifles rather than the line by line musket firing of the period. The Battle of Borodino (the next battle shown some 7 years after Austerlitz) shows about 30 seconds of fighting before that battle scene ends. For a man who won some 60+ engagements, some far more important and impressive then the ones shown in the film, to just skip through this to show more film of him and Josephine is nothing short of infuriating. If you have any historical knowledge of this period then you may as well go and watch documentaries because this film will just not do it for you. I would love to see another director try this one out again. But I fear that boat has sailed.