Too plain to be entertaining and artistic which contradicts Kubrick

Rating: 2/10 (12 March 2010)

Weirdly, Spartacus is out of Stanley Kubrick's style, a plain epic, visually plain, the content is plain, direction is plain... I don't know why, but I always see Spartacus and Ben Hur as like as two peas, may be so that they come from the same period. I don't compare Spartacus with Ben Hur, but it cannot be another Ben Hur, Ben Hur was much better, if you ask me. Spartacus is not a spectacular epic. The movie is not boring, I did not get bored at all, but it is not interesting enough throughout and as I said, everything is plain, in addition, there was nothing great. Except the final that I will mention later, there is not any scene memorable or impressive that I would talk about. May be I should mention the sword fight scene. There is a sword fight in the movie and it was really engaging and entertaining. However, the rest is like a straight, plain line. As for Stanley Kubrick, he is one of my all time favorite directors, but Spartacus is not like a Kubrick movie at all, you know almost every movie he made was different, extraordinary, but Spartacus is not. As you know, may be he is the most perfectionist director ever lived and his style was not distinguishable, but just impressive. In fact, it would be enough, if I just said perfectionist. However, Spartacus is an exception in his filmography. Kirk Douglas is also one of my all time favorite actors too, but unfortunately cannot save the movie. Before watching, I had known that Spartacus is not a historical action movie, no battles scenes etc. so I did not disappointed on this count, otherwise, Spartacus would have been a bigger disappointment to me. As for the final, one of the most unforgettable finals ever seen, I couldn't forget it for years.