Ben-Hur (1959)

What a waste of my time!!!

Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

This is 3.5 hours long but who cares! It is fantastic and earns to be the only biblical film to win Best Picture! It won 10 others, too. (Titanic and Return of the King did this, too.) The story follows a Jewish man betrayed by his friend and vows revenge, but changes his mind when he meets Jesus. The chariot race is the best scene! The remake is good too but it can't compare to this masterpiece!

A perennial Xmas favourite on TV during my childhood, spectacular biblical epic Ben-Hur opens with the birth of Jesus: manger, star, wise men, shepherds... the whole nine yards. Those TV programmers knew what they were doing.The film then scoots to XXVI A.D.-Jesus is now a grown man doing God's work; meanwhile, Jewish prince Judah Ben-Hur (played by distinctly non-Jewish blue-eyed hunk Charlton Heston) is reunited with his Roman childhood friend Messala (Stephen Boyd), who has just been appointed tribune of Judea. Messala, desperate to keep the Jews under control, asks Judah to help him quell any potential rebellion, but his friend refuses to betray his people. As a result, the pair part as enemies.This animosity proves problematic for Judah when his sister accidentally knocks a roof tile onto the Roman governor as he arrives in town. Seizing an opportunity to make an example of the influential Hur family, Messala sends Judah's mother and sister to jail, and has Judah thrown into slavery as a rower on the Roman galleys. After several years of 'battle speed', 'attack speed', ramming speed' and 'warp speed', Judah earns his freedom by saving the life of a Roman consul during a sea battle. Returning home, Judah searches for his mother and sister, seeks revenge on Messala, and has a profound encounter with Jesus of Nazareth.In the wrong hands, Ben-Hur could have been an epic bore, but director William Wyler proves himself more than worthy of the task, commanding great dramatic performances from his superb cast, and mounting some stunning action scenes, the highlight being the film's iconic chariot race, a breathtaking piece of cinema that still holds up as one of the most exciting sequences ever committed to film. Every last cent of the massive $15,900,000 budget is up there on the screen, with impressive sets, excellent production design and a cast of thousands. Miklós Rózsa's wonderful score complements the action perfectly, the deserved winner of one of the film's eleven Oscars.Sadly, Ben-Hur no longer pops up on TV every Christmas, meaning that it's probably not found much of a new audience in recent years-a shame, because it really is worthy of any film fan's time-all three and a half hours of it!

This dramatic documentary is a great denunciation of the evil nature of the Roman empire. Their conquests were extremely brutal and merciless. We are all very grateful that Judah Ben Hur won the horse race against the evil Messala.The scene where we see the back of Jesus is a spiritual elevation experience for the soul...

On the surface, the classic "Ben-Hur" is remembered for the dazzling chariot race featuring the grimacing Charlton Heston at the reins. But on a deeper level, this leisurely paced and nearly four-hour big-budget film is a great Christian tale.Based on the bestselling novel of Civil War general Lew Wallace and first published in 1880, "Ben-Hur"is set in Judea at the time of Christ. Judah Ben-Hur is a patrician Jew, who comes into conflict with his childhood chum Messala, who becomes the Roman Tribune of Judea. An accident that kills a Roman consul implicates Judah, his mother, and his sister, leading to the imprisonment of the women and to the sentence of Judah as a galley slave.After Judah saves the life of another consul, Quintus Arrius, on the Roman ship, he is adopted as a Roman citizen. He becomes a skilled charioteer who figures in the famous chariot race in which Messala cheats during the race and is eventually trampled under the horses' hooves when he falls from his chariot. Of course, Judah is the winner.The film has an overt homoerotic level in the interactions of Messala and Judah. But it is Jack Hawkins as Quintus Arrius who steals the show, especially when he is gawking at the manly muscles of the galley slaves during their rowing exercises.The plot summary above fails to convey the principal mission of the film to tell the story of the Crucifixion. At a critical moment of his life, Judah Ben-Hur was befriended by a stranger who gave him water when he was near death. The stranger touches the life of Judah in a way that will promote love and healing in his family. Of course, the stranger is Jesus of Nazareth.Much of the Lew Wallace narrative is clumsy, especially the sequence when Judah's mother and sister become lepers and the love of Judah's life, Esther, refuses to reveal the truth to him. It is only the power of Jesus that eventually produces the miracle that will place love, instead of revenge, in the heart of Judah Ben-Hur.