Ben-hur: No major splash here

Cast: Jack Huston, Toby Kebbell, Rodrigo Santoro, Nazanin Boniadi, Ayelet Zurer, Morgan Freeman

Rated: 5/10

The first time I saw Ben Hur, the character, on the big screen was around four long decades ago. That was in the bigger than life movie The 10 Commandments. For those times, it was a grand movie made on a grand scale. It was a rivetting Biblical depiction that soon got the classic cult.

Many Ben Hurs from Hollywood have come and gone in the intervening years, most of them not really making an impact that would stay forever or even for a long time.

Now comes yet another one, named to the point — Ben Hur. The stage is somewhat grand this time too but the story, very very sadly, gets shrunk into a mere chariot race in the end. You could blame it on the over-dependence of CGIs. It’s almost like a modern day car race, only with horses harnessed to chariots.

Jack Huston as Judas Ben Hur is modest. Just when Jesus is happening to Jerusalem, his adopted brother is happening to him. The premise of the entire tale is his Roman brother’s spat with him and his family and the cruel unthinkables he does to them.

Despite Morgan Freeman playing a totally disconnected African trial leader who engineers the climax race to put the dawdling film on the fast track, there is so much missing in the film that you feel bored.

It needed to have more of a story. It needed to have more of a beginning and more of a finish. It lacks is most part despite being ambitiously big. 

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 21 August, 2016