By Emilio Frenk
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Cast: Jack Huston, Toby Kebbel, Rodrigo Santoro, Nazanin Boniadi, Ayelet Zurer, Pilou Asbaek, Sofia Black-D'Elia and Morgan Freeman.
Rating: Poor.
Another remake hit the theaters this weekend and is“Ben-Hur” and I´m going to start with a strong note and is the fact there are movies that you cannot make remakes of and this is the case here.
Based on the novel by Lew Wallace, the movie tells the story of Judah Ben-Hur (Jack Huston) a young jew that has a very good and strong relationship with his adopted brother Messala (Toby Kebbel).
One day Messala decides to join the Roman Army and this will lead to his betrayal against Judah making him a slave.
Eventually Judah escapes and seeks the help of Ilderim (Morgan Freeman) who will help Judah to find his revenge against Messala, leading him to a race in the colliseum and eventually to redemption.
This version of Ben-Hur never worked from the beginning and is light years away from the 1959 version that scored 11 Academy Awards and is considered one of the greatest films of all time.
This case of a remmake remind me of the 1998 version of “Psycho” directed by Gus Van Sant based on the Alfred Hitchcok film and the results were very poor.
The climax of the film of the race in the colliseum is totally fake and preposterous that it´s not engaging.
Despite the length of the 1959 movie that it´s almost a four hour movie, this one I felt it was boring and slow from th beginning to end despite of the 2 hours length.
The performances are not convincing, except for Morgan Freeman that is always a delight seeing him in movies but one actor cannot save the whole movie and this one lead to a huge mess.
At some point I wanted to walk out the theater and I rarely have that feeling and the same happen when I saw ¨Nine Lives”.
Timur Bekmambetov who in 2008 did “Wanted” and worked previously with Freeman is a Director that can deliver and I hope this is a learning experience from him. The Script is all over the place and over explains too much leading to a lack of interest of the film and characters.
Ben-Hur is so far one of the biggest disappointments and please watch the original film from 1959 and don´t waste your time and energy on this version.