A disappointingly conventional effort from an all-star production team and cast

Rating: 5/10 (19 June 2013)

Probably Stanley Kubrick's most conventional film, "Spartacus" lacks the intensity and creativity that usually characterize his work. His and star Kirk Douglas's earlier collaboration, "Paths of Glory" (1957), has these elements in abundance, so the fact that they are absent from "Spartacus" feels like a regression. Co-star Tony Curtis's accent is not quite as bad as reputation would have it, but his character is largely extraneous. Douglas gives an almost too understated performance as the reluctant rebel leader, while Charles Laughton and Laurence Olivier are compelling as classical patricians in their classical, patrician way. As if to mirror the reserved acting, Dalton Trumbo's script is thin, with little of the deep character analysis, historical insight, or contemporary commentary that writers like Gore Vidal brought to 1959's "Ben-Hur." The production is effective enough, but its visuals and pacing are staid, conservative, and unchallenging. Most of the movie may as well have been made by an old-school sword-and-sandal auteur like Cecil B. DeMille rather than a New Hollywood experimentalist like Kubrick. The film's battlefield sequences, so stunningly executed in "Paths of Glory," suffer the most from a failure to cut loose or try fresh approaches. They are ponderous, more so even than the rather obvious dialogue that takes place in the Senate chambers and baths.