The Worst Film Ever

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

"Spartacus" is a movie which is a landmark in the film history, and inevitably this movie compared with the epic movie "Spartacus" of 1960 with Kirk Douglas as Spartacus."Spartacus" divided into two parts. The first part of it is better than second because has more action and show us the effort of the people for freedom. Counter to second part which is not as good as the first, I think that the second part is boring and awful. The only good part of this movie is Rhona Mitra who played as Varinia and is really beautiful. If you want to see a movie of "Spartacus", then watch the classic movie of 1960 "Spartacus" not any remake of this.

One of the previous reviewers, whose review garnered a "useful" label by 29 out of 29 people at the time of this writing, had the gall to correct the "thumbs up" vs "thumbs down" decision-making style of the gladiatorial arena.This is the height of hubris. In reality, there is not a person alive today who truly knows what motion of the hand meant what in ancient Rome. The entirety of our knowledge of the "thumbs up" thing comes from a passage in a letter written in Latin where it is mentioned that at a recent gladiatorial game the writer had observed that the fate was decided in "the usual way" by means of "pressed thumb". Hollywood interpreted this as thumbs up vs thumbs down, but who the hell knows what it really means.Where the previous author collected this notion of down meaning "spare him" and some kind of "stabbing motion" meaning "kill him" is completely mysterious and untrue. The arrogance with which he delivered the assuredly true claim forced me to correct him publicly, as his review of this film had been validated by 29 people, which by extension validated this fiction he perpetrates.

If there is any reason to watch this remake, it is Alan Bates' brief appearance as Agrippa. This was his very last, and his easy brilliance is a treasure, as always. There is also some decent camera work and editing in this mini-series. Poor Goran V. is horribly miscast as Spartacus. If he had hoped to break his type-cast as a thoughtful, well-spoken intellectual type with this role, he should have put some organic, animalistic effort into it. Vin Diesel (whom I detest) would have been better casting for this part. And as much as I sometimes tire of Kirk Douglas's over-the-top acting, his raw power in the original Spartacus was a world-away more convincing.

Spartacus was of course a historical figure on who there are not that many details. I saw a Discovery Chanel feature a while back which had just the dry historical facts. However, as a figure that has inspired many,(the guy was a favorite of Marx) particularly because its' a story of the oppressed rising against the rich. Therefore many people have taken the skeleton of what's known and added their own fictional meat.There is an old book by an Italian, Raffaelo Giovagnoli which I read as a kid and really loved. It has Spartacus falling in love with Sulla's wife Valeria, and he has a son and so on. Then there seems to be the Howard Fast book which I haven't read.Kubrick's is but another interpretation of that story, and a very Hollywood one at that, with the positives and negatives that entails. For some reason, many people on this board seem to associate the name Spartacus only with Kubrick and Douglas and assume this is a remake. It's not. It uses the base of what is known about Spartacus and adds fiction like the girl (by the way, I'm a big Rhona Mitra fan, she is sssmokin'), and the love story and so on. I don't know if that is taken from the H. Fast book or not but if this series is treated as another re-interpretation of the story rather than a remake of the old movie I think people would enjoy it a lot more.That said, I thought that this series is really well done, as are many mini-series of this kind such as the Dune ones or Merlin. The actors are very solid and many are British which is always a good thing in my book. For some reason there seems to be a rule that in every historical movie the cast has to be predominantly British and they all make sure they speak with the appropriate accent.Altogether a good 3.5/5 with gusts up to 4.5 depending on how much of a fan you are of a) historical movies; b)Goran; c)Rhona Mitra; d)the strong supporting cast: Macfayden, McNeice, etc.