After many years of absence at sea, Judah Ben-Hur, a strong and honest prince, who has been accused by his adopted brother, who works as an officer in the Roman army, of treason, the thing that leads him to be fired out from his land, returns to his homeland, in order to revenge from his brother.
While it isn't a total disaster, the new Ben-Hur is unnecessary; the original still works as well as it did more than 50 years ago. This is nothing more than an action movie made for the new generations, which works for a while. [Full review in Spanish]
Ben-Hur has clearly been designed and marketed to feed the appetite for projects with a spiritual foundation. Beyond the merits of that concept, though, there's precious little to celebrate creatively speaking.
Just because you're rolling in the chariot doesn't make you Charlton Heston. That's a lesson this weightless, instantly disposable remake of the 1959 sword-and-sandal Oscar winner learns the hard way.
Though it seems unlikely to dislodge William Wyler's 1959 version, its story of a Judean prince (Jack Huston) who keeps running into Jesus of Nazareth (Rodrigo Santoro) offers plenty of action and spectacle.
