Spy of Napoleon: A bit dusty, but strangely watchable

Should you watch Spy of Napoleon today? Honestly, that depends on your tolerance for movies that feel like they were filmed in a museum. If you’re a fan of period dramas or just really love watching 1930s actors try to look intensely suspicious while wearing heavy coats, you’ll have a grand time. If you need your spy movies to actually have some, you know, action, you’ll probably want to turn this off after the first ten minutes.

The plot is exactly what you expect. It's all about traitors, secret papers, and people whispering in corners. It feels a lot like Kidnapped in terms of the general vibe, though maybe with less sword fighting and more sitting around looking worried.

There is a scene near the middle where they are talking about military secrets, and the guy in the back—I think it was Henry Oscar—just stands there holding a stack of papers for way too long. It starts to feel like he’s waiting for a bus. I actually chuckled because it felt like the camera just forgot to cut away.

The pacing is… well, it’s not exactly fast. It’s more like a slow crawl through a very long hallway. Some of the performances are quite good, especially when they stop trying to be so dramatic and just talk like regular humans. But then they’ll drop back into that weird, stagey theater voice that everyone seemed to use back then.

Is it a masterpiece? No. Does it feel like a movie that was dug up from a basement? Yes. But there’s a certain charm to it, kind of like finding an old, slightly moldy book in a dusty attic. You don't read it for the excitement, you read it for the mood.

The costumes are surprisingly detailed, though. You can tell they put a lot of money into the hats. Everyone has a hat. So many hats! It made me wonder if the prop department just had a surplus of fancy headgear they needed to get rid of. 🎩

There’s also a moment where the shadows on the wall look suspiciously like a cardboard cutout, but I didn't mind. It added to the whole homemade feeling of the production. It’s not polished, but it’s not trying to trick you either. It’s just people acting in a room.

If you're in the mood for something that doesn't require much brain power and you enjoy the aesthetic of old films, give it a shot. Just maybe keep your phone nearby for when the dialogue gets a little too repetitive.

• The lighting is very moody, if a bit uneven.
• The dialogue is mostly people telling each other things the audience already knows.
• The ending comes out of nowhere, which was actually kind of a relief.