It can be a welcome shift for a biopic to divulge a less-cited aspect of a historical figure’s life, but the new film “Napoleon” isn’t quite sure what chapters of the man’s timeline to highlight.

Scott McDaniel, assistant professor of journalism at Franklin College.  Photo provided

The script feels disjointed, weaving through years as if hastily spliced together, spending much of its time on a failed marriage that doesn’t seem to have any real implications to the wars French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was known for, nor the brutality that veteran filmmaker Ridley Scott specializes in bringing to the big screen.

The project reunites the director with Joaquin Phoenix for the first time since their work on “Gladiator” in 2000. And like “Gladiator,” we’ve got another bloody gallop through history. And it looks marvelous, with lavish palaces and sweeping shots of epic battlefields. Where the story falters, these grand set pieces keep the film’s pulse.

The story begins in 1793 with Napoleon, then an ambitious young army officer, successfully leading a sneak attack on the British in the midst of the French Revolution. We see his military rise to glory through dominating battles across the globe, eventually using his political clout to crown himself emperor of France in 1804.

It feels like yet another role for Phoenix to be that socially awkward, mentally unhinged lead we’re used to him being. He captures the ego necessary of a man who routinely marches hundreds of thousands of men into battle—quick to take full credit for his successes but equally fast to blame his failures on others. Overall, Phoenix depicts the emperor as a frumpy man-child who is more likely to earn bewildered laughter from the audience than the admiration his followers gave him.

This makes the heavily emphasized marriage with Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) a strange detour from the legacy the man left behind. Their relationship takes up a considerable chunk of the movie, full of dead-eyed gazes and robotic interactions, but it never feels like a romance worth exploring, especially considering the enormous scale of Napoleon’s political accomplishments.

Napoleon’s story is controversial enough, but the movie has garnered its own criticism from historians, many of whom claim the majority of the two-hour-and-38-minute runtime is historically inaccurate. Creative liberties are often taken with the biographical subject matter—it’s just that details like showing Napoleon blasting cannons at the Egyptian pyramids are blatantly added for drama and have no basis in truth, which rubs some people the wrong way (the French aren’t fans of the movie).

While perhaps more fictionalized than the history majors in the audience would like, “Napoleon” is consistently engaging and damn fun to look at. 3.5/5 Cannonballs

FOOTNOTE: Scott is an assistant professor of journalism at Franklin College. He lives in Bargersville with his wife and three kids.