Review of Spartacus (81)

Plot
A slave named Spartacus turns on his owners and leads the other slaves in a violent rebellion against the Roman Empire.  As they move from town to town, their numbers swell as escaped slaves join their ranks.  Meanwhile, in Rome, the slave revolt has become a deciding factor in the power struggle between two senators, each of whom sees the fortunes of the rebellion as the key to his own rise to power or humiliating defeat as Spartacus and his followers press on toward freedom.

Jason’s Thoughts
Within the first hour of Spartacus, I was thinking that I was going to give this movie a 5-star rating as I was totally engrossed in the film.  Watching Spartacus and the rest of the slaves transform into gladiators was interesting in my mind.  After the training was done, I was ready to watch the slave revolt happen before my eyes, however, that is when the movie slows down and gets sidetracked.

After that first hour, we get to see Spartacus amass quite an army of slaves and see them talk about their plans on how to make their way through Italy to regain their freedom.  On the other side, we get to see the higher ups of the Roman Empire make political power plays to try to gain more power and talk about how to defeat the slave army, both of which nearly bored me to death.  

In its defense, the movie did pick up again near the end just before the final battle.  Again, I found myself amazed at how movies were once filmed by seeing the thousands of soldiers marching on the battlefield.  Not only that, but I was also amazed that a three hour plus movie ended on a down note.  Even with a deflating ending, the middle of the movie turned what could have been a 5-star movie into a 3-star movie.  Just because it is an epic doesn’t mean that it has to be over 3 hours long.  Cutting and trimming parts of this movie would have done wonders.

Crystal’s Thoughts
It seems these “epic” movies have come all at once, this being the second movie over three hours long that we would sit down to watch within a week.  Thankfully, it was a really good film.  First, the movie without doubt made one think about slavery and how far back it really does go.  One issue I did have with the opening was the indication that slavery no longer exists.  It does.  It may be illegal, but it does exist in some parts of the world.  Even though slavery isn’t in our backyard, this film really was an awakening of how cruel it was and is where it may still exist.  Who is anyone to decide the someone else should be in the ranks of a slave?  While my heart loves the stories of the deep South in the past, this movie really made me think if I could have lived during that time when slavery ran so rampant in our own country.

The film itself was incredible.  This movie to me did not feel that “aged” at all.  Quite the opposite as I would think it would be easy for one to believe this was filmed within the last decade, not many decades ago.  The camera work and editing of the film is exception, and the storyline, though set back in BC Rome, held many modern day dilemmas, including the love story between Spartacus and Varinia.  There were also undertones of how homosexuality was present back then, seemingly I thought more present than today.  Overall, I think this film had it all, a well written script, drama, action, romance and well filmed/edited.  The only aspect I may have changed is to shave about a half hour to an hour off of the run time.  I think that would make it a lot more enjoyable for all.

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