It is easy, upon hearing the words "Ridley Scott's Napoleon movie," to make assumptions about what that movie might be: a grand, lavishly-produced awards season historical epic from the filmmaker behind Gladiator that traces the rise and fall of one of European history's most ambitious, most towering figures—the tale of a legend, an icon, a living myth who once walked the earth.
In practice, however, it delivers something far stranger: Yes, it's a lavish portrait of one man's political ambition. But rather than holding up that ambition as something to be admired, it skewers its subject, casting him as insecure and outright pathetic, an awkward and ill-mannered weirdo whose psychological frailty drove him to lead battle after bloody battle, leaving millions dead in his wake. In Scott's caustic, darkly humorous portrayal, Napoleon Bonaparte wasn't an icon of greatness or a stirring legend, but a coarse and petty tyrant whose smallness nonetheless resulted in vast and meaningless brutality.
