Amazon.com Essentials:
Stanley Kubrick was only 31 years old when Kirk Douglas (star
of Kubrick's classic Paths of Glory) recruited the young
director to pilot this epic saga, in which the rebellious slave
Spartacus (played by Douglas) leads a freedom revolt against the
decadent Roman Empire. Kubrick would later disown the film because it
was not a personal project--he was merely a director-for-hire--but
Spartacus remains one of the best of Hollywood's grand
historical epics. With an intelligent screenplay by then-blacklisted
writer Dalton Trumbo (from a novel by Howard Fast), its message of
moral integrity and courageous conviction is still quite powerful, and
the all-star cast (including Charles Laughton in full toga) is full of
entertaining surprises. Fully restored in 1991 to include scenes
deleted from the original 1960 release, the full-length
Spartacus is a grand-scale cinematic marvel, offering some of
the most awesome battles ever filmed and a central performance by
Douglas that's as sensitively emotional as it is intensely
heroic. Jean Simmons plays the slave woman who becomes Spartacus's
wife, and Peter Ustinov steals the show with his frequently hilarious,
Oscar-winning performance as a slave trader who shamelessly curries
favor with his Roman superiors. The restored version also includes a
formerly deleted bathhouse scene in which Laurence Olivier plays a
bisexual Roman senator (with restored dialogue dubbed by Anthony
Hopkins) who gets hot and bothered over a slave servant played by Tony
Curtis. These and other restored scenes expand the film to just over
three hours in length. Despite some forgivable lulls, this is a
rousing and substantial drama that grabs and holds your
attention. Breaking tradition with sophisticated themes and a downbeat
(yet eminently noble) conclusion, Spartacus is a thinking
person's epic, rising above mere spectacle with a story as impressive
as its widescreen action and Oscar-winning sets. --Jeff Shannon
