Ben-Hur (Yes, The One From Last Year)

Ben-Hur (2016)

25% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 164 reviews)

Runtime: 123 minutes

Directed by: Timur Bekmambetov

Starring: Jack Huston, Toby Kebbell, Rodrigo Santoro, Nazanin Boniadi, Ayelet Zurer

From: MGM/Paramount

I know, you're amazed too that this wasn't too good... read out why below:

In the time between this flopped hard at the box office and now, I do understand why this was remade. As much of a classic as the 1959 movie is, it takes almost 4 hours to watch in one sitting. There's the 1925 silent, but most of the general public couldn't be arsed with silents. Plus, in the past few years there have been plenty of apparently atrocious religious films released in the United States by small companies which have done surprisingly well at the box office. Unfortunately, for these filmmakers I imagine that crowd just saw this as a random Hollywood movie, still preferred the 1959 classic, and/or would have preferred this be released around Easter instead of August, as they stupidly did here. The fact that this pales in comparison to the legendary Charlton Heston version and was eviscerated by critics didn't help either. I discovered for myself that this isn't too good.

The general story is the same as the previous versions, although they made a few changes and none of them were improvements. I'll give one big example: Judah Ben-Hur and his family got into trouble in the previous versions after a tile from their roof accidentally falls and almost kills an important Roman. Here, some underaged boy who hates the Romans tries shooting one with an arrow-and misses-and Judah decides to protect the boy and decides that it'd be better if he and his family go through all that suffering, because... I don't know, exactly. Other changes (like Messala being adopted by the Ben-Hur family) are less consequential, although maybe not as here the Hur family come across as less likable.

This is bad compared to the legendary '59 film, and even the '25 silent. I got the impression this was originally going to be longer than 2 hours, as it seems that entire scenes were cut out and the movie seems rushed, especially in the final act. I can't say the performances are bad, but the movie is pretty forgettable and inconsequential. As it's Hollywood, even the fact that two of the women supporting characters here were of Middle Eastern descent has to be noted. Then again, this had the problem that is systemic to Hollywood films nowadays where the camera moves around way too much-and this even includes dialogue scenes-so it's one step forwards, two steps back... in addition, the last two movies did not show the face of Jesus Christ, in order to make Him special; they don't do that here.

Even the big chariot race is not as good or thrilling as the ones in '59 or '25. It reminds me how broken Hollywood is and how their influence causes most remakes to be inferior at best. Here, Judah is not as much of a hero or an inspirational figure; ironically, as others have noted, Messala has more of a story arc than that of our title character. This isn't so bad that you can riff on it with your friends; there's just no reason to watch this.