Review of Ben-Hur (2016) by Jeff B — 21 Aug 2016

Despite some standout set pieces, this unoriginal and uninspiring take on Ben-Hur goes round in circles as if chasing its tail, seemingly remaking the 1959 William Wyler epic rather than adapting Lew Wallace's classic Christian novel in its own voice. When Morgan Freeman gets tapped to provide the by-now-clichéd Wise Man narration as he's done for countless other H'Wood productions, you know that a film isn't exactly striving for creativity. Here, the team that brought the hit cable docudramas The Bible and A.D.: The Bible Continues to the small screen, producers Mark Burnett (CBS's Survivor) and Roma Downey (CBS's Touched by an Angel), buffer up the same safe, cut-and-dry, and speed-resistant sheen that they gave to Son of God, a children's Bible story marketed as an adult drama where Jesus Christ looked and walked like a Tom Ford model. Sure, blood and guts spillage gets teased, but it's all a sleight of hand. Very little of this film feels real, in fact, as so much CGI gets used to finish off shots and render people that the software engineers should be eligible for their S.A.G. and Director's Guild cards. If this techno trickery at least struck a unique chord, some of these transgressions could be forgiven. In a recent article for Variety, the producers even promised that this version will be different from the Oscar-winning classic starring Charlton Heston, but the 2016 re-do definitely plays out like a pale imitation. Even the one improvement on the 1959 version - economy - often acts as a deficit. Sure, the new model clocks in at nearly two hours less than its forebear but at the cost of decent storytelling. Some choppy editing makes for some awkward and abrupt transitions.

In this PG-13-rated religious drama, a wealthy Jewish merchant and prince (Huston) gets falsely accused of treason by his adopted brother (Kebbell), so he returns to his homeland to seek revenge, but finds redemption instead.

Certainly, the production had potential (not just the faith-based filmgoers who made Miracles from Heaven a hit either). This novel once outsold Gone with the Wind and the producers took great pains to make everything but the running time epic (the budget is reportedly in the neighborhood of $100 million and the cast and crew prove somewhat star-studded in comparison with, say, Son of God). Aside from an exhilarating galleon and chariot battle (again, mirrors to Wyler's classic and augmented by too much CGI) and a game cast, Ben-Hur comes off as redundant and underwhelming a Biblical epic as Noah and Exodus: Gods and Kings-themselves pale imitations.

Bottom line: Chariots of Misfire.