Let’s be honest: no one needed another “Ben-Hur,” certainly not in 2016, and yet here comes Timur Bekmambetov storming the gates, CGI in one hand and the weight of a dozen cinematic ghosts in the other, determined to prove that this saga still matters. Does it? Well, not always in the way the greats hoped, but it moves like mad, flashes prettily, and—God help us—actually tries for some feeling amid the dust and digital splatter.
Jack Huston, as Judah, wears the role like someone trying on gladiator sandals two sizes too big—earnest, game, and determined not to be trampled by all the epic machinery. Toby Kebbell’s Messala, meanwhile, isn’t so much a brother as a Roman-issue frenemy, and you can feel the screenwriters pinning their hopes for gravitas on his cheekbones and moral confusion. The real steady hand amid this new wave of Jerusalem heat is Morgan Freeman, who shows up with dreadlocks and the sort of twinkling sage routine only Morgan Freeman could pull off. He’s not about to upstage the chariot, but just watch his eyes during the calm before the race—he seems to know both what’s coming and how little any of this sword-waving ultimately matters.
Bekmambetov’s Rome is a digital funhouse: every column gleams, every dust mote is staged, and the chariot race, that fabled set piece, is given such a steroidal jolt you expect the camera itself to crack open from sheer exertion. They bash and clatter through the Circus Maximus as if Michelangelo’s David had rubber wheels, and in these moments, you almost, almost forget you’re watching a revival instead of a revelation. When it works, it’s less “cinema history reborn” and more like a slick pop cover of a standard—no heresy in that, but when you want to weep or cheer, you’re mostly just watching the effects department do chin-ups.
Character? There’s a pleasant, TV-movie sort of efficiency to it all—Huston’s Judah feels the slings and arrows, Kebbell broods as required, and Bekmambetov tries, earnestly, to wring some tears from their falling-out. The script insists on forgiveness and redemption the way corporate vision statements insist on synergy; you know it belongs there, but you feel the negotiation. The theme of vengeance melting into forgiveness—Judah’s battered soul yearning for grace—is handled with a sincerity that, for brief flashes, threatens to become genuinely moving. And yet, for all the sincerity, what lingers is the glaze of action and sound design, that relentless sense that you are being ushered into awe, whether you like it or not.
What the movie does nail is its pacing: two hours barreling ever forward, all plot and speed. If you blink, Judah is a prince; blink again and he’s rowing for his life. Every rise and fall feels neatly aligned with modern attention spans—Bekmambetov, after all, is no Cecil B. DeMille but a post-MTV showman, happy to keep your popcorn hand moving.
In the end, you don’t leave this “Ben-Hur” swooning or shivering. You leave a little dazzled, a little bludgeoned, almost convinced you’ve watched something important. But for all the digital dust, what tickles and aches is the old story’s stubborn resilience: betrayal, forgiveness, and the possibility of making yourself anew after the world has finished trying to trample you. If spectacle alone could redeem us, this “Ben-Hur” would ride right up to glory; as it is, it’s a handsome, over-caffeinated sprint around the arena—hardly transcendent, but not at all a disgrace, and sometimes, when the wheels spin just right, you feel the old story’s pulse flutter under the chrome.
So: go for the surge, stay for the faint tug of feeling—just don’t expect a miracle amid the mayhem. That, apparently, even Morgan Freeman can’t deliver.
