BY OUR FILM REVIEWER ORSON KUROSAWA

SOMEWHERE DURING THE Battle of Waterloo scenes in this movie, Rupert Everett, playing the Duke of Wellington (Yes) says: “Jesus Christ”. I felt he spoke for all us when he said those words. Perhaps the screenwriter was trying to express his own feelings.

Everett’s performance is one of the more amusing in a movie that feels like it lasts almost as long as Napoleon’s career, without ever touching its highlights.

I read somewhere that the bill for this farrago through late eighteenth and early nineteenth century European history was upwards of $200 million and that it would have to make $600 million just to break even. Good luck with that, Ridley.

The battle scenes are all echoes of the opening scenes of Gladiator, with Napoleon actually leading cavalry charges at Borodino in Russia and at Waterloo. Errol Flynn all is forgiven. In Egypt, Napoleon apparently wins a battle by firing a cannon ball into one of the pyramids. Strength and Honor.

Actually, the movie is not really about Napoleon, it’s about Napoleon and Josephine, with the military victories, the politics, the genius, almost thirty years of war, all playing supporting roles, if even mentioned.

Josephine is a powerful female character from central casting, who has the French Emperor under her thumb. Well, under some part of her anyway. Aside from being a rampant nymphomaniac, who has ridden more hussars than hussars have ridden horses, she responds to her husband’s – yes, they are married – equine noises by surrendering her saddle to him for some energetic galloping at any time of his choosing, no matter how humiliating. However, attempts to create a Little Napoleon fail due probably to her being rancid with venereal disease, and she has to give up her position to a little Austrian temptress, so France can have a successor to Bonaparte. It’s tragic. I mean the movie, not the situation. That’s just comical.

The dialogue is unique; the acting mostly consistent with the dialogue save for a few hardened veteran thespians who can always make something of nothing, such is their talent.

I understand there is a four-hour version of this movie somewhere. What was that the Duke of Wellington said?