Worthwhile but uneven and poorly paced

Rating: 7/10 (17 November 2000)

For all the praise it's received, I really think Spartacus is a pretty flawed movie. Basically the film's scenes fall into two distinctly different categories. First, there are scenes following Spartacus as he suffers through gladiatorial school, rebels against his tormentors, falls in love, and leads a slave revolt that threatens to topple the power of the Roman empire. These segments succeed in everything they seek to achieve-- they entertain mindlessly and viscerally, and somehow manage to be exciting and predictable at the same time. We all know, for instance, that the mean gladiator instructor is eventually going to get what's coming to him, but we're actually surprised and a little shocked when he finally does. Add an effective score by Alex North, some occasionally touching human drama, and a massive battle sequence that clearly served as inspiration for Braveheart's massive festivals of destruction, and you've got one hell of a movie.
But then someone decided that the film needed about an hour and forty-five minutes of flat, uninteresting, irrelevant, utterly useless political intrigue among the Roman heads of state. Spartacus is one seriously lengthy movie, and during the segments focusing on the senate and the military leaders you can't help but look at your watch a few times. I went along with these scenes at first, but after a while I lost track of all the confusing different political figures and what they were trying to accomplish. I sat trying to figure out who everyone was and how the intrigues affected the Spartacus revolt story and found myself dozing off. Having seen the film again, I now know who everyone is, but I still haven't figured out why all this scheming and plotting is important to the story at all. It's just dead weight that slows the movie down right when it should be reaching escape velocity, and I really wish most of it had been left in the editing room.
I can only half recommend this film. A movie made up of just the Spartacus story along with only a few, essential scenes devoted to the Roman leaders would really have been a true classic. But instead we have a movie that just gets in its own way for just about half of its running time. Good thing Kubrick had more control over the rest of his films...