ANY filmmaker daring enough to remake Ben-Hur, the 1959 Roman-era epic that captured 11 Oscars and elevated Charlton Heston to Hollywood stardom, must create a better version of that movie especially its iconic and climactic chariot race.
To be credible, a remake has to find a different path into a familiar story, a different way to re-imagine the leading character.
Bekmambetov understands this but his changes suggest that, when it comes to re-imagining a major blockbuster, it is an uphill battle.
Ben-Hur was one of Hollywood’s biggest crowd-pullers. The 1880 novel, written by Lew Wallace, was adapted into a four-hour TV mini-series, a Broadway play, and most famously the 1959 movie with its excitingly dangerous chariot race.
Directed by William Wyler with a screenplay by novelist Gore Vidal, the 1959 Ben-Hur was the most expensive film back then. It ran 212 minutes and, with Heston as the lead, became an enduring piece of movie history; it is the 14th highest-grossing movie.
In the hands of Bekmambetov, the celebrated epic has been trimmed by an hour and 40 minutes.
Nevertheless the story stays mostly true to the 1959 tale of Judah Ben-Hur, the fictional prince of Judea who is falsely accused by the Roman occupiers of Jerusalem, sent to the galleys, survives and makes his way around the Roman Empire, finally returning home to seek revenge.
The first Ben-Hur movie’s big set pieces were the sea battle between Romans and Greek pirates, and the great chariot race.
In the current film, the set pieces remain awesome but some parts of the story have been altered.
Our protagonist, Ben-Hur (Huston), a Jewish prince in Roman-occupied Jerusalem, and antagonist, his adoptive brother, Messala Severus (Kebbell), remain intact. Messala falsely accuses Judah of treason and leaves him to suffer aboard a Roman slave ship.
Judah, played by fresh-faced Huston, does not save the life of a Roman consul and become his adopted son. His being a Roman citizen of privilege is taken for granted.
Instead, Bekmambetov and his scriptwriters have expanded the relationship between Judah and Messala, the Roman orphan who would become his mortal enemy in adulthood.
For the first time, we go back to their early years, watching Messala save Judah’s life before departing to seek his destiny in the army to prove his worth after years of feeling “second class” in his foster family’s home.
The previous film merely introduced us to Judah and Messala at the point where the latter returns to Jerusalem as a commander. Thus, this back story is a timely, thoughtful addition on the part of Bekmambetov.
One of the strengths of Ben-Hur 1959, was the careful attention to detail. Messala retreats to check the balcony from which an arrow was fired at a Roman official. And in the chariot race, pain and fear is written all over Judah’s face.
Such interesting bits are absent in the new movie, rendering it a watered down version of the original, much like a modern-day, layman adaptation of a Shakespeare play that dispenses with much of its literary richness.
In Bekmambetov’s Ben-Hur, while the action sequences are still commendable, the dialogue is uninteresting. This was never the case with the Wyler film, which is filled with moments of wit.
Even Freeman in the role of Sheikh Ilderim fails to freshen up the movie. He looks almost like a replication of his Moorish medicine man Azeem from the 1991 movie Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves.
While the award-winning actor has done a lot better than this, he is no match for the articulate Hugh Griffith in the 1959 film, who stole the show with his crazy antics.
The best thing about this new Ben-Hur, written by Keith Clarke and John Ridley, is that it delivers superb, adrenaline-pumping action sequences which resemble scenes from the Fast And Furious movies.
People are trampled on and dragged around the race track, and squealing horses topple in clouds of dust in the chariot race. The exciting 10-minute scene powerfully captures the savagery of the Roman mob.
Huston’s performance is no match compared with Heston’s gravitas. Huston’s Judah is physically too fragile to withstand the horrors of being shackled on a slave ship where he and his fellow prisoners row to a booming drumbeat.
Nevertheless, Huston and Kebbell have good on-screen chemistry, and this makes their love-hate “bromance” credible and believable.
As for Zurer (Judah’s mother Naomi), Boniadi (his wife Esther) and D’Elia (his sister Tirzah), they do justice to their limited roles, but are mainly eye candy.
Wyler’s Ben-Hur won 11 Academy Awards, a record that has since been equalled by Titanic (1997) and Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King (2003). From the mostly negative reviews in the US, Bekmambetov’s movie is less likely to feature in next year’s Oscars.
All is not lost with Ben-Hur 2016, though. For those who were not born during the heydays of the defining Heston gem, Bekmambetov’s movie is a decent introduction to the cinematic life of Hollywood’s most iconic chariot racer, because it is a straightforward, storybook-style reintroduction to Judah, Messala and their times.
Watching it, too, may encourage fans of Roman epics to get hold of the superior 1959 version, which will always be the definitive Ben-Hur.
NOW SHOWING
BEN-HUR
DIRECTED BY Timur Bekmambetov
STARRING Jack Huston, Toby Kebbell, Rodrigo Santoro, Nazanin Boniadi, Ayelet Zurer, Morgan Freeman
DURATION 120 minutes
RATING PG