I'm a sucker for old sword-and-sandals epics... so this one is right up my alley!!

Rating: 10/10 (15 December 2011)

Just an all-around classic! Best film of 1960 (no small feat when the competition is Hitchcocks's best film - PSYCHO) and one of the greatest epics ever put on celluloid. Next to BEN-HUR and THE TEN COMMANDMENTS I can't think of another more worthy epic than this one. The cast is to die for! Kirk Douglas is perfect as Spartacus and Jean Simmons has never been better than here as Varinia (although she was also great as Diana in THE ROBE) but the real scene-stealers are the magnificent trio of Sir Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, and Peter Ustinov (who won the Supporting Actor Oscar). Choosing between these 3 is like choosing between your favorite children. Sometimes I really want to say that Olivier is my favorite but it's really difficult. All 3 are great! The battle scenes are some of the best you'll ever see from that time. Heck, there's a scene where a man's arm is hacked off completely. I mean that's BRAVEHEART material right there! But this was 1960! Great stuff. No CGI. Just hordes of men engaging in epic warfare!
The interesting thing is that I am not a fan of Stanley Kubrick's. Not at all. But this one is an exception. Probably because it's not really a Kubrick film. Sure he directed it but it's not the type of film that he would normally direct. He was only brought in by Douglas to replace Anthony Mann after Douglas fired Mann. So it's basically a non-Kubrick film directed by Kubrick. And that can only be a good thing. At least for me. Kubrick is a master of the craft but the subject matter he chooses to tackle never interests me in the least. That's why SPARTACUS works so well IMO.