Review of Spartacus (1960) by Taneli N — 13 Sep 2009

Not as badly obsolete, as I expected it to be. The problem with these epic movies is that they are way too long. Unlike newer epic movies, like Kingdom of Heaven's director's cut, old ones have too much of irrelevant scenes. You could have easily cut an hour off and you wouldn't have lost anything important.

Also a thing that bothered me in this movie, was that some acting performances didn't seem natural to me, they were too much like if they were acting in a theater. In this movie Spartacus is born in slavery, but historically it is believed that he had military experience in the Roman army before his slavery. If it had been this way in the movie, it would have been easier to believe Spartacus was a military genius, but in the movie he just suddenly transforms in to one. Also the musical scores of these old movies all sounds the same, no variation.

But apart from these things the movie was worth to watch. The battle scenes actually surprised me, I didn't expect them to be so bloody. Also the scenes where there was thousands of people were made brilliantly. Roman politicians plotting in the senate is also always pleasure to watch.