Spartacus

In all fairness to the people who remade this movie, they had a difficult task ahead of them. Any remake of this story begs comparisons to Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece and when you come up against greats such as Olivier, Ustinov, Douglas and the old dude who played the fat senator you are going to come up short.

Nevertheless I was optimistic about this remake because I thought that new technology, modern film techniques and historical authenticity would make it fresh and vibrant. Kirk Douglas was too old and too "Anglo" to play the real Spartacus. The ER guy is definitely more ethnically accurate. I was also looking forward to seeing the actor who plays Crassus, who I thought was excellent in BraveHeart.

But I felt this version squandered much of the dramatic impetus of the Spartacus legend. Particularly disturbing was the whole George Bush/Marcus Crassus analogy that is not subtle at all. Crassus refers to Spartacus' slave army as "terrorists", talks about a "New World Order" and even uses the phrase "you're either with us or against us". I'm no fan of Dubya, but I found the overt preaching quite annoying and insulting; even worse, it took away from the story. Had it been somewhat more subtle, the way Kubrick's film deftly poked at McCarthy style conservatism I think that the story would not have lost out.

I saw this on USA Channel and thought it was a great production. This is a remake of a wonderful story with Kirk Douglas and Jean Simmons. Directed by Robert Dornhelm and writing credits to Howard Fast for the novel, and Robert Schenkkan for the teleplay, it is an exciting war of the slaves against the Romans. The war scenes, however, would have been more spectacular on the big screen; however, they were bloody. This is different from the original because the love story is expanded; Spartacus fathered two children by Varinia; one is killed by Crassus, but the other lives after the crucifixion. Spartacus is played by Goran Visnjic, Lentulas Agrippa is Alan Bates, Pompey is George Calil, and Varinia is Rhoma Mitra. The lecherous and miserable Crassus is played by Angus MacFadyen. All actors play three-dimensional roles and are very good. If you want to enjoy good acting, music, and beautiful scenery, go for it! 8/10

Goran Visnjic gave a very credible performance as Spartacus. Instead of the superhero-style portrayed by Kirk Douglas (which I happened to LOVE that movie), Goran added more depth to the character ... the strengths AND the weaknesses. I also liked how the show developed his skills as a gladiator by having him do some real fighting rather than how it was done in the original.

Crassus (played by Angus MacFadyen) was likewise very three-dimensional. It was a shame that the movie was only 2 hours long (4 hours if you count the commercials). Given more time, it would have been enjoyable to see more of Crassus's political maneuvering. If that character had been born in our century, he'd be king of our country by now.

And there were surprisingly strong performances by others in bit-parts, like George Calil as Pompey, Ben Cross as Glabrus, and Henry Simmons as Draba. You can see that they did their homework and put real work into their character developments.

All in all, I give it an '8'. I'd like to give it a higher score, but I thought that the fight scenes were less than spectacular. Add a few thousand more stand-ins and maybe it would have been more believable. But I just didn't get the sense of volume that should have been there.

The 1960 version of Spartacus remains one of the best historical epics ever made but this new film rates very well beside it. It is more historically accurate and much more faithful to the original Howard Fast novel on which both films were based.

All the actors did a good job. Goran Visnvjic was an effective Spartacus and Rhona Mitra a feisty Varinia very much in keeping with the book. Alan Bates is at his best in the role of a senator playing a behind the scenes role in trying to stop Crassus in his drive for power over the Roman state. I was least impressed by Angas Macfadyen in the role of Crassus although it's still a competent performance. I guess that Lawrence Olivier who played Crassus in the 1960 movie is a hard act to follow.

The battle scenes are competently performed but the armies look much smaller than the historical record said they were. I guess the original Spartacus had more money to spend on extras. A long standing wish of mine is for a Roman epic to get the armor right. The Roman soldier of this period wore short mail shirts and used oval shields. The segmented armor wasn't introduced until about a century later.

I couldn't fault the history. Everything seems to be done right, from the first battle when the slaves abseiled down the cliffs of Vesuvius to attack the Roman camp to the splitting up of the slave army when Crixus and Spartacus had a falling out. The gladiator scenes are just as good as the original too.

All in all, a great movie that even die-hard fans of the Kirk Douglas version should enjoy.

One of the previous reviewers, whose review garnered a "useful" label by 29 out of 29 people at the time of this writing, had the gall to correct the "thumbs up" vs "thumbs down" decision-making style of the gladiatorial arena.

This is the height of hubris. In reality, there is not a person alive today who truly knows what motion of the hand meant what in ancient Rome. The entirety of our knowledge of the "thumbs up" thing comes from a passage in a letter written in Latin where it is mentioned that at a recent gladiatorial game the writer had observed that the fate was decided in "the usual way" by means of "pressed thumb". Hollywood interpreted this as thumbs up vs thumbs down, but who the hell knows what it really means.

Where the previous author collected this notion of down meaning "spare him" and some kind of "stabbing motion" meaning "kill him" is completely mysterious and untrue. The arrogance with which he delivered the assuredly true claim forced me to correct him publicly, as his review of this film had been validated by 29 people, which by extension validated this fiction he perpetrates.