Ben-Hur in the famous chariot race.
Ben-Hur
I
t was always audacious to remake the 1959 classic film
based on General Lew Wallace’s famous novel. To trade on
its huge success makes comparisons inevitable however. The
main reason this is such a disaster is that director Timur
Bekmambetov and his screenwriters haven’t a clue what life
was like during this period of history. So they invent
situations for the characters which are so preposterous and
contrived that they are often comical. The religious aspect
seems tacked on for purely commercial considerations and
Rodrigo Santoro makes no impression whatsoever as Christ.
The film-makers must have hoped that by choosing some aspects
from the novel and inventing plenty of others that the mix would
somehow come alive. It unfortunately fails miserably as nothing
seems authentic save for a sea battle seen from the eyes of a
gallery slave, the only convincing episode in it.
The chariot race is impressively filmed but there is no build up of
tension, and this version of it is also improbable. Some of its
aftermath and the film’s climax would have been more appropriate
in Monty Python’s Life of Brian. The theme of forgiveness in a
region which is still so troubled never seems relevant.
This film is supposedly a serious one and cost $100 million to
make. It is the story of two brothers, Judah Ben-Hur and Messala,
a Roman who is adopted and brought up in the wealthy Ben-Hur
household in Jerusalem, then under Roman rule. Messala departs
for Rome and returns as the garrison commander under the
governorship of Pontius Pilate but much changed. When a Zealot
from the Hur residence tries to assassinate Pilate, Judah, who was
helping him recover from injuries, is sent to the galleys and his
mother and sister imprisoned. He survives and seeks revenge when
he drives Sheikh Ilderim’s horses against those of Messala in the
symbolically significant chariot race in the Circus.
Sheikh Ilderim.
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Jack Huston as Ben-Hur lacks Heston’s integrity and physicality and
Toby Kebbell has no stature as Messala. It is truly sad to see
Morgan Freeman, a superb actor, in an appallingly silly role as
Sheikh Ilderim who is also depicted as some sort of guru. As Esther,
Judah’s wife, Nazanin Boniadi, is a nonentity. Pilou Asbæk is terrible
as a monstrous Pilate. Its use of CGI is poor, shooting it in 3D is
largely irrelevant and the theme song is ghastly. If Charlton Heston
was alive he’d turn in his grave at a remake as pathetically
inadequate as this.
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