Editing Waterloo (1970 film) (section)

===Critical response===
On the review aggregator website [[Rotten Tomatoes]], 30% of 10 critics' reviews and 83% of 207 audience reviews are positive. [[Roger Ebert]], writing for the [[Chicago Sun-Times]] said "Bondarchuk is so overwhelmed by the thousands of Russian cavalry troops he's been given to play with, and by his $25 million budget, and by his obsession for aerial photography, that his leading characters turn out scarcely more human than his extras." <ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/waterloo|website=Rotten Tomatoes| title=Waterloo| access-date=May 16, 2025}}</ref> Tony Mastroianni of the [[Cleveland Press]] wrote, "Waterloo is solid, sometimes to the point of lumbering... But Waterloo succeeds in what it set out to do - to re-create a major historical event and place it in some kind of perspective."

Writing in ''[[The New York Times]]'', [[Roger Greenspun]] called ''Waterloo'' "a very bad movie," citing Bondarchuk's "obsessive" directing and Steiger's overacting:
{{Blockquote
|text=Steiger plays a peace-loving Napoleon, crafty, tired, much weighted with the destiny he seems never to get off his mind. Like a [[Willy Loman]] not wholly aware that he has lost his territory, he alternately schemes and complains -— as if, in addition to all his other achievements, he had discovered at Waterloo the sources of theatrical naturalism. It is an awful performance, and every mannered point of it is emphasized by the elephantine selectivity of Bondarchuk's camera -— narrowing upon the eyes, a weary fold of flesh, the carefully hunched back, the hat, the pudgy man's walk. During the first parts of "Waterloo," when Napoleon is much in view, I thought that no director, not even Bondarchuk, merited Steiger's performance. Later, in the heat of the battle, I felt that not even Steiger need have suffered through Bondarchuk's direction. But now critical calm has put all things in perspective, and I realize that they richly deserved each other.<ref name="Greenspun">{{cite news|last=Greenspun|first=Roger|title=A Battle Fought Strictly for the Camera: Bondarchuk Directs Craig's 'Waterloo'|date=April 1, 1971|url= https://www.nytimes.com/1971/04/01/archives/screen-a-battle-fought-strictly-for-the-camerabondarchuk-directs.html|work=[[The New York Times]]|access-date=24 March 2024}}</ref>
}}