Ben-Hur

2016 At the movies October 2016 Suzanne A. Marshall

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




Leave a Reply