Best movies like Napoleon
He came from nothing. He conquered everything.
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Napoleon Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Vanessa Kirby, Tahar Rahim, John Hollingworth, and more. If you liked Napoleon then you may also like: The Viking Queen, War and Peace, Nicholas and Alexandra, Jefferson in Paris, Juarez and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
A personal look at the French military leader’s origins and swift, ruthless climb to emperor, viewed through the prism of Napoleon’s addictive, volatile relationship with his wife and one true love, Josephine.
Napoleon
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War and Peace
Napoleon's tumultuous relations with Russia including his disastrous 1812 invasion serve as the backdrop for the tangled personal lives of two aristocratic families.
Nicholas and Alexandra
Tsar Nicholas II, the inept last monarch of Russia, insensitive to the needs of his people, is overthrown and exiled to Siberia with his family.
Jefferson in Paris
His wife having recently died, Thomas Jefferson accepts the post of United States ambassador to pre-revolutionary France, though he finds it difficult to adjust to life in a country where the aristocracy subjugates an increasingly restless peasantry. In Paris, he becomes smitten with cultured artist Maria Cosway, but, when his daughter visits from Virginia accompanied by her attractive slave, Sally Hemings, Jefferson's attentions are diverted.
The Affair of the Necklace
In pre-Revolutionary France, a young aristocratic woman left penniless by the political unrest in the country, must avenge her family's fall from grace by scheming to steal a priceless necklace.
Beasts of No Nation
Based on the experiences of Agu, a child fighting in the civil war of an unnamed, fictional West African country. Follows Agu's journey as he's forced to join a group of soldiers. While he fears his commander and many of the men around him, his fledgling childhood has been brutally shattered by the war raging through his country, and he is at first torn between conflicting revulsion and fascination.
Captain Horatio Hornblower
Captain Horatio Hornblower leads his ship HMS Lydia on a perilous transatlantic voyage, during which his faithful crew battle both a Spanish warship and a ragged band of Central American rebels.
The Count of Monte Cristo
Edmond Dantés's life and plans to marry the beautiful Mercedes are shattered when his best friend, Fernand, deceives him. After spending 13 miserable years in prison, Dantés escapes with the help of a fellow inmate and plots his revenge, cleverly insinuating himself into the French nobility.
Patton
"Patton" tells the tale of General George S. Patton, famous tank commander of World War II. The film begins with patton's career in North Africa and progresses through the invasion of Germany and the fall of the Third Reich. Side plots also speak of Patton's numerous faults such his temper and habit towards insubordination.
The Last Samurai
Nathan Algren is an American hired to instruct the Japanese army in the ways of modern warfare, which finds him learning to respect the samurai and the honorable principles that rule them. Pressed to destroy the samurai's way of life in the name of modernization and open trade, Algren decides to become an ultimate warrior himself and to fight for their right to exist.
Gettysburg
In the summer of 1863, General Robert E. Lee leads the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia into Gettysburg, Pennsylvania with the goal of marching through to Washington, D.C. The Union Army of the Potomac, under the command of General George G. Meade, forms a defensive position to confront the rebel forces in what will prove to be the decisive battle of the American Civil War.
The Duellists
In 1800, as Napoleon Bonaparte rises to power in France, a rivalry erupts between Armand and Gabriel, two lieutenants in the French Army, over a perceived insult. For over a decade, they engage in a series of duels amidst larger conflicts, including the failed French invasion of Russia in 1812, and shifts in the political and social systems of Europe.
The Woman King
The story of the Agojie, the all-female unit of warriors who protected the African Kingdom of Dahomey in the 1800s with skills and a fierceness unlike anything the world has ever seen, and General Nanisca as she trains the next generation of recruits and readies them for battle against an enemy determined to destroy their way of life.
The Fall of the Roman Empire
In the year 180 A.D. Germanic tribes are about to invade the Roman empire from the north. In the midst of this crisis ailing emperor Marcus Aurelius has to make a decission about his successor between his son Commodus, who is obsessed by power, and the loyal general Gaius Livius.
The Pride and the Passion
During the Napoleonic Wars, when the French have occupied Spain, some Spanish guerrilla soldiers are going to move a big cannon across Spain in order to help the British defeat the French. A British officer is there to accompany the Spanish and along the way, he falls in love with the leader's girl.
Désirée
In Marseilles, France in 1794, Desiree Clary, a young millinery clerk, becomes infatuated with Napoleon Bonaparte, but winds up wedding Genaral Jean-Baptiste Berandotte, an aid to Napoleon who later joins the forces that bring about the Emperor's downfall. Josephine Beauharnais, a worldly courtesan marries Napoleon and becomes Empress of France, but is then cast aside by her spouse when she proves unable to produce an heir to the throne.
The Emperor's New Clothes
Napoleon, exiled, devises a plan to retake the throne. He'll swap places with commoner Eugene Lenormand, sneak into Paris, then Lenormand will reveal himself and Napoleon will regain his throne. Things don't go at all well; first, the journey proves more difficult than expected, but more disastrously, Lenormand enjoys himself too much to reveal the deception. Napoleon adjusts somewhat uneasily to the life of a commoner while waiting, while Lenormand gorges on rich food.
Glorious Betsy
Vitaphone production reels #2471-2478; third Warner Bros. feature film - the first being The Jazz Singer and the second Tenderloin - to include talking sequences, along with the by now usual Vitaphone musical score and sound effects. A copy of this film survives at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., but the sound disks are lost.
Gods and Generals
The film centers mostly around the personal and professional life of Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, a brilliant if eccentric Confederate general, from the outbreak of the American Civil War until its halfway point.
Monsieur N.
This film covers the last years of the Emperor's life, imprisoned by the British on St Helena, a remote island off the west coast of Africa. Napoleon retains a loyal entourage of officers who help him plot his escape and evade the attentions of the island's overzealous governor, Sir Hudson Lowe.
St. Ives
In 1813, Capitaine Jacques St. Ives, a Hussar in the Napoleonic wars, is captured and sent to a Scottish prison camp. He's a swashbuckler, so the prison's commander, Major Farquar Bolingbroke Chevening, asks for lessons in communicating with women. Both men have their eyes on the lovely Flora, who resides with her aunt, the iconoclastic and well-traveled Miss Susan Emily Gilcrist. By chance, living close to the camp is Jacques's grandfather and brother, whom Jacques believes died years before. Jacques decides to escape, find his relatives, and win the hand of Flora; Major Chevening and an unforeseen enemy stand in his way. Can Miss Gilcrist contrive to make everything work out?
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
General Candy, who's overseeing an English squad in 1943, is a veteran leader who doesn't have the respect of the men he's training and is considered out-of-touch with what's needed to win the war. But it wasn't always this way. Flashing back to his early career in the Boer War and World War I, we see a dashing young officer whose life has been shaped by three different women, and by a lasting friendship with a German soldier.
Hearts Divided
Napoleon Bonaparte's younger brother, visiting the United States, falls madly in love with a young woman he meets in Baltimore.
Darkest Hour
In May 1940, the fate of World War II hangs on Winston Churchill, who must decide whether to negotiate with Adolf Hitler or fight on knowing that it could mean the end of the British Empire.
Chevalier
The illegitimate son of an African slave and a French plantation owner, Bologne rises to improbable heights in French society as a celebrated violinist-composer and fencer, complete with an ill-fated love affair and a falling out with Marie Antoinette and her court. Inspired by the incredible true story of composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges.
The Purple Mask
France, 1803: 11 years after the Revolution, a royalist underground is led by a new 'Scarlet Pimpernel', the Purple Mask, who rescues nobles in distress and kidnaps Napoleon's officials for ransom, aided by the spy services of a group of lovely models headed by Laurette (really the Duc de Latour's daughter). But even she doesn't know the Purple Mask's real identity as foppish dancing master Rene...
The Brigand
Carlos Delargo, the banished son of a royal princess of Mandorra, is returned to the kingdom to be tried for a murder change. However, he is freed by King Lorenzo, whom bears a remarkable resemblance to Delargo. When the king is wounded by assassins sent by Napoleon, Delargo takes over the throne at the request of the Prime Minister in a plot to thwart the traitors. He also falls in love with Princess Teresa, the king's fiancée.
Scaramouche
A law student becomes an outlaw French revolutionary when he decides to avenge the unjust killing of his friend. To get close to the aristocrat who has killed his friend, the student adopts the identity of Scaramouche the clown.
Hornblower: Duty
Admiral Pellew interrupts Hornblower's wedding reception and tasks him to locate a British ship which has disappeared off the French coast, where Napoleon's troops are engaged in covert activities.
How to Stage a Coup
A guide to human history through its most audacious power grabs. From Julius Caesar to Napoleon; from Mussolini to the strongmen of the present day - we see how the world we know has been shaped by those who dream big.
The Viking Queen
Set in ancient Britain, at a time when much of Europe was ruled with harsh tyranny by Rome, a tribe of Britons led by Selina, set out to defy the invaders and discard their yoke of bondage. The Roman commander, Justinian, is sent to quell the uprising, punishing the dissenters with brute force but when he becomes emotionally attached to Selina, he is torn between his duty to Rome and his love for the Viking Queen.