Ben-Hur (2016)

Directed by Timur Bekmambetov. Starring Jack Huston, Toby Kebbell, Nazanin Boniadi, Morgan Freeman, Pilou Asbæk, Moisés Arias, Marwan Kenzari, Ayelet Zurer, Sofia Black-D’Elia, James Cosmo. [PG-13]

Maybe they saw a chance for a quick buck, or maybe they thought it would be nice to tell the story of Judah Ben-Hur in about half the time as the Oscar-winning William Wyler epic, but there surely isn’t a good reason for this rehash to exist. (Granted, the 1959 movie was a remake/re-adaptation of a 1925 silent movie, but John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon and Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” were redos, too, so…) Once again, Jewish prince Judah Ben-Hur (played with no personality whatsoever by an ineffectual Jack Huston) is betrayed by his adopted Roman brother and best friend Messala (played by Kebbell in a similarly uninteresting fashion), setting the wronged man on a path for revenge many years later. Oh, and the King of Kings is in there somewhere, too, but mostly just the rushed final fifteen minutes. The previous Ben-Hur epic was hardly subtle, but the heavy hand of the dialogue/narration here slaps harder than a chariot rider’s whip; considering how simplified and streamlined the drama has become, we’re lucky there’s a message at all amid the heightened action, unbridled enthusing, and CGI-assisted visuals. The chariot race—which has gone from centerpiece to marketable main event (the film even opens with a “teaser preview”)—is as reckless as it is ridiculous, choppy and phony and shot way too tight most of the time; I rewatched the end of the sequence multiple times and still don’t understand what happened with Messala. Nothing about this so-called “new interpretation” works, from conception to craft to making a salient point to the casting/acting (even Morgan Freeman sleepwalks through the thing as a Nubian sheik), and the decision to give pretty much everyone a happy ending—Messala included!—borders on the revolting. I mean, who thought it would be a smart idea to insert multiple moments/camera shots that try to turn Ben-Hur into a Christlike figure…in the same movie the “actual” Jesus appears in!? John Ridley and Keith R. Clarke scripted and co-executive produced.

23/100