A Great Movie

Rating: 10/10 (19 April 2014)

I won't lie, some parts of Ben-Hur do move a bit slowly. But I think it's alright because just about every scene moves the plot in one way or another. It's not like in Once Upon a Time in the West where you have three guys waiting at a train station for another guy to arrive on a train for ten minutes (not that I don't like Once Upon a Time in the West). And the chariot race is amazing.
Another thing I really like about Ben-Hur is the villain. Real life isn't black and white, obviously. It's sometimes nice to have villains whom you can sympathize with (like Roy Batty in Blade Runner). But it can also be nice to have a villain whom you don't have to sympathize with at all. It's pretty satisfying to see his chariot break and see him trampled under the hoofs of the horses of another charioteer. And the ending with Jesus, well, some people might say it's cheesy, but I think it's amazing. And I'm not even a Christian.
If you're looking at it from an artistic perspective, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus is probably the superior movie. But I think Ben-Hur is more entertaining and emotionally satisfying.