This Ben-Hur has almost exactly the same story as Charlton Heston's version, only it is condensed - shaving over an hour of play time from the previous movie. This Ben Hur is also much more of a party animal than before, and does a better job of building and harboring hatred on his "revenge" trip as the film goes on.
A fair amount of death always gets a thumbs up from me!
The antagonist, Messala, is quite likeable here which is good given how they change the ending. He also kills a -lot- more people this time around. Morgan Freeman is present too - as a less jovial and much more serious horse racing manager. Jesus also gets actual face time this time around, instead of just seeing him from a distance, or his back, or his hand / foot.
Ben-Hur's mother and sister get a bit of a shaft on screen time, as does the boat captain and Jesus (which is made up for his face time I think), but I do quite like their take on the naval combat this time around. The mother and sister cut is probably the worst of the condensation, but the rest of the film does make up for it. The two films are also a nice comparison between really good CGI of the new one vs actual tactile sets of the old one. Both certainly have their merits.
All up I give this 3.5 chariots out of 5, which scores it a tad higher than Mr. Heston's version, purely because it is of a more reasonable length which makes the question of "would I watch this again?" be a definite yes.
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