Historically inaccurate, but just so darn entertaining

Rating: 9/10 (25 January 2010)

This movie does some weird stuff to the Roman time line (the special appearance by the by that time long-dead Gracchus comes to mind), but that's not really the point of the whole thing. It just wants to show you a beautiful spectacle, and it really delivers. From the first minute in this movie is incredibly compelling, mainly because of the portrayal of Spartacus, which strikes exactly the right tone. Kirk Douglas gives him a lot of different aspects, a lot of good and bad points, which really helps showing of his human side. Kubrick directed, but he never really manages to put his own identity into the movie. However he does manage to create some really marvellous battle scenes, which I guess is the next best thing. This movie isn't better or worse than his later works, it's just really, really different from them. Overall I really enjoyed this movie, totally worth the three hours.