I do not buy one who is an anxious, insecure, uncharismatic cold fish but also a stern tactical genius and an effective leader of men, one who flees from Egypt because Josephine is unfaithful but is also an unflappable military mastermind. I can buy a Napoleon who is an egomaniac and an overrated tactician (like in Tolstoy's War and Peace). If you want to take this route then fair enough, but the character here fails to be consistent. The movie is a demythologization (some would say emasculation) of Napoleon.

Still, the big problems here are characterization and pacing. Even as a history buff I can forgive many of those: cutting or simplifying events for the sake of narrative, or even some overdramatization like the meeting between Napoleon and Wellington (it never happened) or Napoleon being present at Marie Antoinette's execution (he wasn't) however, stuff like Napoleon charging with his troops at Waterloo is absolute cringe, a kid's (or a lout's) idea of history. The elephant in the room is the large amount of historical inaccuracies. Even past the age of eighty Sir Ridley can still shoot pretty and energetic pictures but his hits and misses depend on the scripts he picks, and he hasn't always shown the best discernment. Unsurprisingly, The Duellists had a strong source material (it was based on a novel by Joseph Conrad which it often followed almost verbatim), while Napoleon has an uneven screenplay by David Scarpa. Ridley Scott directed one of the best movies ever made set during the Napoleonic Wars: unfortunately, that movie is not Napoleon but his cinematic debut, The Duellists, forty years ago.

Napoleon cake with fruit near me