Review: Joaquin Phoenix plays a buffoonish Bonaparte in the lavish but threadbare 'Napoleon'
They say that behind every great man is a great woman. "Napoleon," Ridley Scott's clamorously eventful but oddly desultory new epic, wrings its own variation on that idea: Here is a man whose love for a woman fuels and finally destroys his delusions of greatness. He, of course, is Napoleon Bonaparte, played by Joaquin Phoenix with a bicorn hat, a dyspeptic grimace and an unshakable air of post-"Joker," post-"Beau Is Afraid" tragic clownery. She is Joséphine de Beauharnais, the glittering-eyed widow who will reign at Napoleon's side for a spell as empress of France, and who is infused with quietly mesmerizing gravity by Vanessa Kirby.
"You are nothing without me," Napoleon says, infuriated by reports that Joséphine has taken a lover. A few beats later, she seizes the upper hand, sealing a kinky contract of mutual need and ambition that will bind them long after they've been dethroned. For now, they conspire to rule over
