By Suzanne A. Marshall from the October 2016 Edition
Starring: Jack Huston, Morgan Freeman, Toby Kebbell, Rodrigo Santoro
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
““Judah Ben-Hur loses everything after his adopted brother Messala, now an officer in the Roman army, returns to Jerusalem and accuses the young prince of treason. Stripped of his title and separated from his wife and family, Ben-Hur must endure years of slavery on a galley at sea. When fate brings the estranged brothers to an epic and deadly chariot race, Ben-Hur finally gets the chance to exact vengeance on the man who destroyed his life.”
The movie was just OK for me and I wonder why they decided to remake this film at all. Unless they were prepared to make it even more powerful than the 1959 version star-ring Charleton Heston which won an astonishing 11 Academy Awards, why bother? Perhaps someone felt a modern version for the new generations was in order.
There are some interesting special effects for the chariot race scenes. However, the rest of the story for the most part was a little lackluster and the plot is lacking some in-sights into the personalities and thus the rationale for the conflicts portrayed between the brothers.
IMDB has rated this movie as 5.7/10 based on 8,702 viewers.
Download the full edition or view it online
—
Suzanne A. Marshall hails from western Canada and has been living the good life in Manzanillo over the past 8 years. She is a wife, mom and grandma. She is retired from executive business management where her writing skills focused on bureaucratic policy, marketing and business newsletters. Now she shares the fun and joy of writing about everyday life experiences in beautiful Manzanillo, Mexico, the country, its people, the places and the events.