Napoleon Bonaparte didn’t actually watch Marie Antoinette having her head chopped off. Nor did he damage the pyramids with cannon fire on his Egypt campaign. He did not – as the film’s slogan so proudly boasts – come from nothing, being the son of an aristo. At Austerlitz in 1805, his greatest day at the office as a military commander, the results of which essentially ended the Holy Roman Empire, his victory wasn’t entirely locked in by tricking his opponents onto a frozen lake and firing cannonballs through it like a more successful Wile E. Coyote. He didn’t even speak in English with an American accent. To all such criticisms, director Ridley Scott has said, “Bollocks.” Actually what he really replied was, “Get a life,” but in the spirit of his sprawling ...