The success of any film depends mostly on the script. Why Scott would initiate such an expensive project without ensuring a refined and sophisticated script is a mystery. I'm not convinced there is a single interesting scene that provides insight into the characters or captures through language the prevailing political ideas. Scott's frequent missteps as a director reflect a greater interest in the cinematic rather than in the dramatic. However, this seems inevitable when your priority is delivering a blockbuster that will have broad appeal instead of digging deeper into culture, society, or history. A colossal waste of an extraordinary opportunity to create an important film about a fascinating historical figure.

A word of warning for those expecting another Gladiator or non stop action spectacle. It is not. Truly not...

The bad: director Ridley Scott knows how to make action scenes look slick and impressive (and he does an excellent job again), but he is also known for being quite average at making a drama. And this movie tries (and partly fails) to combine action and drama and somehow ends up being neither one. THAT is one of the reasons I'll only rate it with 6 stars.

More bad: this story has a weak "dramatic" middle (love story) part, which is kinda tedious. And that brings me to a storyline complaint, namely that this story is all over the place. They cram SO much events and history and different characters from different time periods into this one movie that it kinda confused and numbed me down, instead of thrilling me, as an epic should do.

This movie was made for Apple streaming (release date january 2024) in the first place, but they made a shorter (butchered) version for the cinemas in order to be able to compete for the Oscars, which demands that a movie must have run in the cinemas for a couple of weeks. No cinema version, no Oscars.

The original Apple streaming version lasted some 2 hours longer. Nobody is gonna sit in the cinema for over 4 hours, hence they cut this movie up and now it feels somewhat rushed, confusing and disjointed at certain moments.

Not any good then? Joaquin Phoenix is the one redeeming feature. He nails it.. He makes Napoleon look like a complete joke of a man and I love Joaquin Phoenix' performance, but that unfortunately didnt compensate for the other actors being just about average and with little actor's chemistry between them.

I had been warned beforehand by friends that this wasnt the spectacle or epic drama they were hoping for and unfortunately they were right. Certainly not a terrible movie, but one that is just about average.

Thank you for reading my 2100 th review on Imdb.