Deserves respect for its achievement.

Rating: 10/10 (1 May 2006)

Yes its a long movie, probably too long for the MTV generation.Yes its dated (its almost 50 years old). BUT it has brought to the screen a huge story and told it superbly. The SFX are primitive by todays standards but still stir the heart. The chariot race will never be bettered no matter what can be done by computer - it is simply the most exciting live-action sequence ever to be filmed. Stephen Boyd is the greatest of great screen villains and he should have won an Oscar as best actor rather than Heston. Heston is great in this film though, much better than his later more wooden performances. Jack Hawkins was a wonderful actor and was never better.The whole thing has music that is the finest movie score ever. The melancholy scenes wrench tears from the hardest of hearts. I saw this at the cinema on countless occasions as a child, a teenager , a young adult and middle-age on TV and each time ,as I grew older, I derived different areas of pleasure from it. but every time I weep buckets. I am aware that some people hate Ben-Hur, but why really escapes me. It is film making at its best. The idea of someone remaking this intrigues me though and the idea of perhaps Guy Pearce as Judah and Russell Crowe as Messalah directed by Peter Jackson or Ridley Scott has a fascination for me. I remove one point from the score of 10 out of 10 only for the fact that as Joe E. Brown says at the end of Some Like It Hot, "Nobody's Perfect!!"