Movie #160: Spartacus

Movie #: 160
Movie Title: Spartacus
Year Released: 1960

Director: Stanley Kubrick
Notable Cast: Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, John Gavin, Tony Curtis

Short Description: The slave Spartacus leads a violent revolt against the decadent Roman Republic. (IMDB.com)


Rank on the Top 100 Lists (as of 1/7/2013)

AFI.com: #81
IMDB.com: N/A
Ranker.com: N/A
Lifed.com: N/A
Empire.com: #77
FilmCrave.com: N/A
FlickChart.com: N/A



Date Watched: 3/3/2016

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 (Satisfactory)

Rationale: My big issue with Spartacus is that other period movies with similar stories or themes, such as Ben-Hur and Gladiator, got their message across in a more exciting way and, in the case of Gladiator, a lot less time. Many a times Spartacus seemed like it was meandering about which contributed to a 3 hours 17 minutes runtime that easily could have been cut down without losing any of its effectiveness. It probably didn’t help with holding my attention during dull scenes that every interaction between Kirk Douglas’ Spartacus and his love interest, Jean Simmons’ Varinia, felt wooden and forced as if the two had no on screen chemistry. Ultimately I didn’t hate anything about Spartacus, there are simply better comparable movies I’d rather spend my time watching.