josephpturner

I'm not particularly knowledgeable about the career of Napoleon. Knowing that this was supposed to be a big budget presentation about Napoleon, I expected to actually learn more about him. I'm well above average on knowledge of warfare in general but, as I say, lacking in knowledge of how Napoleon's career developed and played out.

But as many reviewers have noted, this film put overwhelming emphasis on his relationship with Josephine. She should have been more of a minor character in the film, not the principal reason for the film. The character of Josephine was more important to this film than Napoleon's military career, if you can believe that!

The ending of the film says it all, by emphasizing the last word Napoleon said was "Josephine." So what! What about the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who died fighting for him? They played second fiddle in this "love story", set with certain battle scenes of little consequence in the background.

Yeah, I liked it as an 11 year old when it first came out. But after just watching again and after having military experience and common sense, so many plot elements made no sense.

Just to mention one toward the end: the British warships are coming and the Germans need to get rounds down range. We see a large gun cavity without a single German soldier in it. No way! Then we see the Germans desperately needing to get it. Remember, this is critical right? The Germans have a ton of tanks in the area. Any officer's first thought on locked doors would be to immediately blow them open with 5-6 tanks we just saw 2 blocks away in the scene when Peck and Niven were driving in. Instead, they use welding torches, LOL, to give the characters time to set the explosives. Happened in this movie but wouldn't happen one in a million in real life.

Yeah, I know, it's only a movie. But it was just too full of that kind of stuff. Like the stupid scene where 50 Germans catch the crew but only 2-3 are armed in a confined room to interview the prisoners who aren't shackled in any way. Lol. And did you notice when they left, no Germans in the outer office at all-when they were dealing with highly skilled commandos?

And by the way, no navy would blindly risk losing 6 warships simply to extricate 2000 soldiers. You'd lose 1200 sailors, plus the ships. The soldiers would have either fought or simply surrendered, right?

I'm embarrassed to admit that my wife and made the error of watching every episode. Somehow we got sucked into it, a decision we regretted.

Don't believe anyone who tells you that they can explain the plot. It is absolutely chock full of so much time travel xrap talk that you get sick of it over time (pun intended).

They are too many other series we should have watched in lieu of this one.

Having said that, if programs on time travel excite you, this is definitely the program for you. But if you think 25 episodes of it might be a little much, stay away! If my wife and I could go back in time, we would have watched something else!

I say "tricky" because the film wallows in racial virtue signaling and ignores true adult considerations. The film makers assert that the only subject to discuss in this situation is race.

But that's not true at all! Whether we're talking 1968 or 2023, it's wrong to leave out other considerations:

(1) the huge and obvious differences in personality between the girl and the guy. The girl is portrayed as painfully immature while the guy is very mature. In real life, no 37 year old guy with substantial career success is going to fall in love (and want to IMMEDIATELY marry) a 23 year old, going on 17. The parents would have every right, be it 1968 or 2023 to object to the shocking differences in maturity level. The marriage would have a 95% probability of failure. The guy would get sick of that girl.

(2) There is a 14 year age difference between the girl and the guy. That's huge and shouldn't be ignored. Strong grounds for objections.

(3) This idea that the couple has to get married in two weeks! No, they actually do not! Again, strong grounds for disagreement.

So forcing the discussion to focus overwhelmingly on race is cheap, whether we're talking 1968 or 2023.

I wasn't impressed at all. I had to stop watching it at some point. I do admit to watching the whole movie around 1970, when whites, even then, felt the strong need to virtue signal. Over 50 years later, more seasoned, I just have to object to the tricky way they tried to force race to be the only issue.

I first saw this movie around 1970 when I was 20 years old. It was odd then and odd having just watched again in June, 2023, over 53 years later.

I've always noted all the "masterpiece" talk about this movie, mostly from so called intellectuals who try to project an image of being film experts. They don't know what the movie is about any more than a normal person does. Have confidence in your observations on this movie. Notice that I call it a movie and not the high brow term, "film."

Don't feel the need to rate this a ten so you can feel good about yourself. In fact, it's like various movies you've seen where you can tell the film maker has no idea of what they're trying to say or how to make their movie end. Kubrick thought that the musical score could turn nonsense into sense. Well, he couldn't and I have over 50 years of experience seeing this movie. Admittedly, the last time was probably 25 years ago. If I see it again, I'll be 95 and will have forgotten that I saw it around 1970.

The only redeeming aspect of the film was the early recognition of the risk of allowing yourself to be controlled by an AI device. All the masterpiece talk should be trashed, with the conversation changing to future risks of AI. Even at that, it will probably be 10 years or more before some fool hands major responsibilities to an AI device when, in hindsight, it was foolish to do so, with the result that many people die.

I know ya get into trouble when ya hope films make sense, so I guess I'm in trouble.

So the young girl is an incest victim. That happens. But then the film suggests the mother and the victim concoct this business of trying to get the girl to pretend she doesn't eat? And the vehicle for it is trying to make the Catholic look crazy? Now sense is slipping out the window. The key moment is when the victim essentially says that by starving herself to death, the result will be that her brother is released from hell for his sins because the girl will have been to blame? Nonsense!

If these are supposedly very conservative Catholics, they would NEVER believe anyone can be released from hell. I'm 72 years old and have never heard of any Catholic ever thinking that anyone can be released from hell. You'd think even a goofy, very conservative Catholic family like this one wouldn't believe souls can be released from hell by first tricking people into thing the girl isn't eating and then, when the mother can't regurgitate food, the mother decides to watch the victim starve herself? No way!

Finally, the nurse comes up with the most unbelievable "solution" imaginable, a real deus ex machina moment. Wouldn't a nurse in a case like this threaten the mother to feed the victim or the truth will be told to that commission?

Kinda funny for as I watched the very last scene of the prison courtyard supposedly in Montrose, CO. As I watched, I yelled out to my wife, "That's my prison!!"

The scene was taped at the south end of the Penitentiary of NM on the edge of Santa Fe, NM. That section is for what used to be called Level 5, sorta one step up from the level 6 about 3/8 mile away for the guys with the very longest sentences. Somehow they got permission to film in an active, real prison.

I worked there as a religious volunteer, going cell to cell from January, 2013 until locked out by Covid. They haven't let me back since March, 2020. I miss the place!

This is mainly for people who watched all five series.

Yeah, parts of it were fun. But in part five, I just wanted it to end. They dragged it out with all those "back story" segments for no good reason. I eventually fast forwarded through all back stories. I even started fast forwarding through the stupid love/sex scenes that dragged it out. It's the kind of series you watch that you gotta be careful about recommending to family members, for fear they will think you're nuts.

Would have been better if they'd cut everything in half.

I've seen a million crime shows. This production takes the cake for dragging out the story. Instead of six episodes, it should be 2, absolutely 3 at the maximum.

I agree with another reviewer who said there was no reason to drag the inspector's daughter into the story. It was slow enough as it was, but the story came to a total stop when air time was wasted on the private life of the inspector. Watch this if you have nothing else to watch.

You don't have to be a criminal defense lawyer to conclude that this movie was totally ridiculous. Just look at one item--We're supposed to believe that the rich guy is some kind of special genius. But look what he did. He risked a 30 year prison sentence on his assumption that when the police came to his house after he killed his wife that the only hostage negotiator that might come to his door was the guy who had been screwing his wife. What if Joe Blow showed up instead? This is L.A., likely with up to ten other guys who might have handled negotiations. Did the rich guy skip considering that the cop he wanted might have been working another case? LOL. He would have been unable to switch the guns as this movie showed because Joe Blow might not own a Glock. Does a "genius" take "all in" risks like that? No.

There is not much point in going over the many other nonsense things about this movie. I just thought I'd mention the above.

Liberals love to talk about how easy it is to make money on Wall Street. So, as a retired bond salesman (from 1994), I enjoy average Americans seeing actually how hard it is to make money. Those guys were in agony as they risked a greater power unwinding their positions BEFORE they could make a huge profit. Great movie to show that, although 99% of moviegoers probably walk out saying they hate banks.

Note also, the greed of the stripper and other average Americans who wanted those hated mortgage loans. If we gonna hate the banks who packaged the mortgage backed securities, how's about hating the average Americans who took out those poor quality loans, thinking they were going to make money?

Hmmm, in the tough times out west, how many Christian type women, desperate to get married, walked up naked to some guy 20 years older and wanted sleep with them, then go hang themselves immediately after having sex with the guy? Tell me. I'd like to know. My guess? Near zero.

This is one of those movies where the writer forces the action by simply writing scenes that make no common sense. The writer wanted the female hero out of the movie, so the character just hung herself.

Another example was when the woman stayed behind to rebury the dead baby. If she is as tough as the movie said she was, why show a scene in which she travels in a huge circle and comes back to the grave site (one in a million), then, as dumb as she had just proved herself to be contrary to her character up to that point, is able to ride her horse in the dark and then find the wagon? If you ride in circles when there is light, why can you find the wagon in the dark? Way too many senseless scenes.

If you are the kind of viewer who likes military oriented movies that bear no relationship whatsoever to how the military actually functions, this is the movie for you! Even though there is not one recorded case in U.S. military history of a captured U.S. soldier murdering a fellow soldier at the behest of his captors, you'll love to see it happen in this movie. You'll just swoon at the totally unbelievability of it all. You'll be thrilled to watch a situation in which the U.S. military apparently declares soldiers dead after a helicopter crash in a war zone without dead bodies or even bothering to initially declare the soldiers MIA. It helps the story to go straight to "dead," so to heck with any attempt at realism. Many posters here with little or no common sense backgrounds seem to really like it so it must be admitted that there is a great market for stuff like this. Thoughtful adults just won't like it.

I'm an old man of 58 who saw this when it first came out. I think I remember thinking it was OK. I watched it and other Bond film again because I could see them in HD. I'm sort of amazed at how weak and lazy this film was, just a fraction of the creativity of the first four Bond films (Dr. No, Goldfinger, From Russia With Love and Thunderball). When I say "fraction," I mean about a tenth as good. In those earlier films, you could have some success jumping into fantasy land and imagining being part of the action and suspense, so to speak. In this film, you'd fall asleep even trying! Connery had gain so much weight and looked so old that he is unbelievable as a carrier of "00" designation.

All I can say is, gee, I wish I could have make as much money in my life as Connery did here and give almost nothing to customer to earn it.

Finally, I liked seeing Jill St. John in high def, actually my main reason to watch this. She is extremely attractive here. She's about 68 years now. I wonder if she is still a "10" for that age category.