MovieChat Forums > Ben Hur (2010) Discussion > No, no, give it a chance. It's good! (...

No, no, give it a chance. It's good! (Spoilers)

posted 10 years ago by cpoet
3 replies | jump to latest

It's Ben Hur week for me. I can practically repeat the 1959 lines with the actors, but I saw the silent 1925 version for the first time a couple of days ago. (Mm, interesting, in a Ripley's Believe It Or Not sort of way.)

Then this miniseries popped up on Ovation. Who knew? And hello, it's four hours surprisingly well-spent.

If you can accept the fact that it's only tangentially connected to the Charleton Heston cinematic spectacular by a handful of characters with the same name, this is a very good movie. About ten times more historical political background greatly enrich the story. There's some thoughtful character development and half a dozen additional juicy subplots--including the sexy double-agent courtesan who goes around poisoning people and gathering intel. (And she's great. You're rooting for her even while TPTB keep dismissing "the whore." "No one misses a slice off a cut loaf." Thanks, that's not insulting at all.)

The chariot race is comparatively dinky, but it's not an insurmountable loss. I couldn't even watch the chariot race in the 1925 version because I didn't want to see a dozen horses with broken legs that had to be destroyed. In this version, the additional storyline more than makes up for the lack of extravagance--I appreciate a studio that skips the hubris of building a $150M coliseum so they can try to trump the Heston version, a long shot at best.

This movie is "A Story of Betrayal & Revenge" instead of "A Story of The Christ," as the book is sub-titled. Jesus is an insignificant character and could have been eliminated all together with 99% of the plot left intact. The two meetings with Judah Ben-Hur and Christ are both weak spots. Christ telling the shackled Judah "they know not what they do" was a puzzler since "they" knew exactly what they were doing. And when Judah Ben-Hur meets Jesus again, it's a bit jarring that he's the most powerful man on the scene and has the authority to pull off the Roman guards, but then loads the cross right back onto the broken man and scampers off. Wasn't there at least supposed to be a refreshing drink of water in there somewhere?

So, definite point loss for minimizing the primary angle of the source material, the correlating timeline between Judah and Jesus. But as a straight sword & sandals movie, it's a good watch.

[–] evenstarofjoenagel 10 years ago

I thought this version was tolerable, but definitely nothing special. Personally, my major complaint was that it was much more David who betrayed Judah, whereas Messala was ordered to kill him and his family, yet saved their lives by not going through with the sentence. It was also pretty much entirely Pilate's choice, and this version looked like a: Messala had no choice and nothing he said would've made a difference, and b: that the riot really could have been caused by the tile falling from Judah's roof (which Messala did not, in this version, see for himself was genuinely an accident). So honestly, for a majority of the time, I was watching and thinking that Judah was being kind of a dick taking so much of his anger out on Messala without even bothering to ask "so you told me I was sentenced to death, how'd I end up in the galleys?" (or later when he found out that his mother and sister were alive, "why weren't they killed like you said, too")

That said, it was, otherwise, not as painful to watch as I thought it would be. The chariot race was, as you said, very underwhelming, but very little can compare to the 1959 version's chariot race. I did find it a bit ironic that in this version, Messala is killed by being thrown over the front of his chariot after his horses leap over another chariot in the way, when one of the highlight stunts of the 1959 version is Joe Canutt (Charlton Heston's stunt double) being thrown over the front of his chariot in the exact same manner, but managing to pull himself back into the chariot.

I liked that this version didn't try to compare to the 1959 version (which I think was a very wise decision, given how wonderful Wyler's version is), but one thing I noted and didn't like (and thought was a bit disrespectful...) was that in the galleys, Joseph Morgan's Judah was number 40, and he was friends with then killed number 41 (Charlton Heston's Judah was number 41). You'd think that, out of all the numbers out there, the writers or someone on set would have thought "hey maybe we shouldn't have our Ben-Hur kill Charlton Heston's Ben-Hur and give him a different number."

[–] BertramWilberforceWooster 10 years ago

I've not seen it, but I love the 1959 movie so I'll give it a shot. Just as I will give the upcoming film a shot.

--
If I cannot smoke cigars in heaven, I shall not go!

[–] ciprianl 9 years ago

Thanks for the advice, but I'll pass.