Ben Hur (2010)

Wonderful character development!

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

first impressive thing is the ambition to create a new adaptation to a classic book. than to look the best way to be more than a great movie remake.and not the last, to have success. result - an adaptation for new generations. not original but good. interesting, giving new nuances - Stephen Campbell Moore does a real seductive Messala, more credible than in 1959 version, Ben Cross is a realistic Tiberius and Joseph Morgan is far to be another Charlton Heston. but the last fact could be a virtue because it is Ben Hur of a new time, part of a chain of blockbusters who use the Greek- Roman mythology and histories.so, a good film. for script, cast but, more important, for science to present a story in right nuances. and that fact is important.

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ is within the top 20 to top 10 best selling books of all time. I was very disappointed that the makers of this series did not have enough respect for a book of that magnitude to even attempt to be accurate. I could rant for a long time about inaccurate this series was, but I will just keep it to some basic info to help prevent people from being disappointed like I was.I will first say that if you do not care about the actual story of Ben-Hur, that the production was pretty good, and you might enjoy this series. If I could block everything from my memory of the book, than I probably would have enjoyed this also.I think the screenwriter skipped reading the book in high school and just read the Cliff Notes instead, and then wrote the script for this about 40 years later off of whatever they still remembered. That might explain the level of inaccuracy. That is all the ranting I will do. For those that read the book this is literally all they got right: a guy named Ben-Hur gets betrayed by his friend, and becomes a slave then saves a roman officer who adopts him, and then Ben-Hur vows revenge and that cumulates into a chariot race. Everything else is totally botched. Also, aside from storyline, none of actors from the Hur family look anything like a Jew, and only one actor (Kristin Kreuk--Tirzah) even attempts an accent.This gets one star because as I said, the production was good, but the acting could have been a lot better, and you just cannot botch a book like Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ that badly and expect anything more.

I am only an hour into this version of Ben Hur - I love the 1959 version and must have seen it dozens of times. I never thought that it could be done as engagingly again. I think that Wyler's version might have benefited from a closer attention to the young Judah and Messala's relationship at the beginning as this TV version does, though briefly. I was a little disappointed with the casting of Judah Ben Hur - he does not have the masculinity of Charlton Heston - but Stephen Campell Moore as Messala is really good if not quite as evil as Stephen Boyd's young roman in 1959. This version works very well so far and has brought an interesting insight into Messala's motivations. He is not all bad as he was in Wyler's film.

The 1959 version of "Ben-Hur" is without a doubt one of the truly great motion picture epics, so it was with surprise, and dismay, that I saw this 2010 re-make mini series appear on my local TV channel, and against my better judgment started to watch, what could only be, this travesty. To my surprise I found within 30 minutes I was totally hooked and engrossed by a deeply touching and superior Television experience. What it lacks in sheer magnificence of the 1959 version, it more than makes up in the human story of a family torn apart by terrible misfortune and fate. Wisely the makers chose a superb young cast in the leads, with Joseph Morgan (as Ben-Hur) and Stephen Campbell Moore (as Messala) not only doing justice to these epic characters but imbuing them with true human emotions. The story is very much the same as the original, and even though it was said the makers played down the religious aspect, I personally found that by doing this they actually heightened it in some respects to truly wonderful effect, especially during the last hour of the story which left this viewer with more than a few tears in his eyes. Naturally the sexual aspect is more explicit, but if one watches the original 1925 silent version you realize that is is something which has always been there but left and only implied in the 1959 version. The famous chariot race of the 1959 version can never be duplicated and the film makers obviously did not have the budget or tried to do so, but apart from that, if you have the opportunity to see this version, do yourself a favor and do so. I think, like me, you will be pleasantly surprised.