TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Mercury-4 I thought this was a good movie, and could have been a great movie.The bulk of the plot of the movie didn't do much for me. I wouldn't necessarily criticize it, I don't think it was bad, it just didn't interest me enough to get my attention.The actual battle of Waterloo though was stunning. This occupied, I don't know how much, a little less than half of the movie, I think 40% or so. But it was incredible. I've spent years playing table-top wargames so I feel like I know how battles work. The battle was really brought to life and all of the details were very clear and vivid. The glory and the horror of battle were brought to life, more than any other battle scene I can think of off hand. There is one moment as an example (I'm going to be a little vague so this doesn't turn into a spoiler) where cavalry charges infantry which is unexpectedly formed into squares. This would be a bad position for cavalry of this era, which you know if you've studied Napoleonic warfare, but the problematic nature of it was immediately clear visually as you watched. I loved this.But to me, the movie is ruined, or kept from greatness anyway, by Steiger. He's a great actor, but he didn't feel like Napoleon to me at all. Napoleon was an intensely charismatic man. Steiger is a -tough- man, an imposing man, but I wouldn't call him charismatic at all. And he feels very American to me.In the Woody Allen movie Love and Death, there is a comic caricature of Napoleon. This version is flamboyant, aware of his own grandeur, believing in his own grandeur (rather like Beethoven). Although the character is comical, I think it is probably much closer to the reality of Napoleon. Closer to my image of him anyway. Ironically Napoleon's body double in that movie, who is intentionally meant to be the opposite of the real Napoleon (crude, lacking style, with a bit of a New Jersey accent), reminded me more of Steiger than Steiger did of Napoleon.Maybe it's my image of Napoleon which is flawed, but I think considering what he did on sheer force of personality, that Napoleon would have felt like a very flamboyant person in person.

Cormac Kelly A total of 16,000 soldiers of the Soviet army where employed to play the armies of Napoleon, Wellington, and Blucher in Sergei Bondarchuck's epic about the final act of Napoleon Bonaparte's rule. Filmed in the Ukraine this film has a amazing attention to meticulous detail. The film wows with its wide shots of massive formations of soldiers marching in battle. It also has an outstanding cast with Rod Stieger as Napoleon, Christopher Plummer as Wellington, and an elderly Orson Welles as Louis XVII. All of whom do a commendable job. I highly recommend this film to anyone who anyone in search of a historical film.

jc-osms Perhaps the fact that I've a keen interest in history and not long ago read a biography of Wellington, drew me to nonetheless watch this big budget flop from the early 70's. Certainly in terms of scale it's a monumental achievement with the director's deployment of the huge numbers of combatants adding to the appreciation of the great generals themselves. With no computerised special effects in sight to artificially swell the numbers, the tableaux of blue versus red (and black) literally pops the eye and boggles the mind. While the bloodiness and brutality of the close combat scenes are not surprisingly toned down in deference to the censor, the cutaway final scene, where Wellington navigates his horse through the vast numbers of the dead, on a blood-soaked battlefield, tellingly conveys in complete silence the truth of Wellington's own words, quoted in the film, that there is only one thing more terrible than a battle lost and that is a battle won. The build up to the climactic battle is not unnaturally less engrossing, being a mixture of the French politics of the day, English societal mores and battle strategy, with a sprinkling of army humour to humanise and perhaps leaven somewhat the seriousness of everything else around it. The acting by the leads is variable, Rod Steiger, almost inevitably gives us The Method a- la-mode while Christopher Plummer somehow fails to convey the stature of Wellington while Orson Welles briefly bloats into view as the exiled French King Louie XXVII. This of course was the age of the anti-war movement which might explain the over-the-top (no pun intended) scene of a young English soldier screaming "Why are we killing each other" as he goes battle crazy as the film makes it point quite pointedly enough without the histrionics.

Neil Welch One has to admit that director Sergey Bondarchuk has very impressively marshalled the resources necessary, and then planned and used them in recreating the battle of Waterloo - the epic scale of the battle is all over the screen.Unfortunately, the film doesn't convey the progress of the battle with coherence in the way that, say, Zulu does. And the battle is edited together from some shots which are beautifully captured in the camera and some which are plainly shambolic.And once one moves away from the battle, things go further downhill. The dubbing for many of the non-English speaking cast is very noticeable, much of the acting is not very good, and Rod Steiger's mannered histrionics as Napoleon are simply awful.I thought this film was not very good at all.