‘Ben-Hur’ Review: Chariot Racer Swings Low in Overblown Remake

The strange teaming of Timur Bekmambetov, John Ridley, and producers Mark Burnett and Roma Downey never matches the previous two big-screen outings for this tale...

If each generation gets the movie spectacles they deserve, then we probably had the new “Ben-Hur” — a scattered and hokey, if well-meaning, mess — coming.

Vampire Killer, devout Christian producing spouses Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, and Oscar-winning screenwriter John Ridley (“12 Years a Slave”), this latest adaptation turns novelist General Lew Wallace’s 1880 “tale of the Christ” — brotherhood, vengeance and gospel writ Roman Empire-large — into a mad movie dash from prince’s palace to slave ship to chariot race.

[...] even in this fertile age for popular Christian-themed multiplex fare, it’s unlikely to supplant film buffs’ memories of the epic 1925 and 1959 versions, nor to create any new converts to its loud, blocky, ADD-minded fusion of pulp and pulpit.

See Video: 'Ben-Hur' Remake Trailer Boasts Shipwreck, Swordplay and Chariots

Wallace’s busy yarn, set in the years parallel to Jesus Christ’s emergent ministry, told of childhood friends pitted against each other over conflicting allegiances: wealthy Jewish prince Judah Ben-Hur (Jack Huston, “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”), sympathetic to his people’s rebellion against tyrannical Rome, and rising Roman military darling Messala (Toby Kebbell, “Fantastic Four”), who makes Judah an enemy when he turns him into a galley slave.

Though the impact of a peaceful prophet gets the last word over the cruelty of an empire, it’s the story’s shrewd worship of both in pop culture terms — feel-good forgiveness meets blood-soaked revenge — that has always appealed to filmmakers.

[...] this “Ben-Hur” takes aim at fusing Wallace’s disparate strands into a more thematically upfront tale of a tight-knit bond shattered by hatred.

Messala is now an orphan raised in Ben-Hur’s Jerusalem home as an adopted brother — the movie opens with them racing horses in an obvious nod toward their final-act coliseum showdown — but with enough wiggle room to allow flirtation between Ben-Hur’s sister Tirzah (Sofia Black-D’Elia, “The Night Of”) and the rowdy Messala.

Whatever the case, there’s no undercurrent of anything in this say-what-one-means script (by Ridley and Keith Clarke, “The Way Back”) as the ambitious Messala pushes his friend to name underground Jewish “zealots” conspiring against Rome; Ben-Hur refuses to do so, until an attempt on Pontius Pilate’s life points to his house and sends our hero into bondage, and his family to prison.

By that point, Bekmambetov’s graceless handling of actors furiously delivering their motivations — Kebbell’s volatility comes off a tad more interesting than Huston’s whispery earnestness — has been mostly wince-worthy, never more so than when Ben-Hur’s path crosses with that of Jesus (Rodrigo Santoro).

(Each offers the other a drink of water at their respective lowest points.) Where Wyler drew haunting power from keeping Jesus a faceless and voiceless figure, like a rumor of deliverance shadowing the hero’s moral struggle, here we get walking, talking son-of-God face time, and the effect is oddly diminishing, turning Jesus into a religious-movie animatronic, spouting greatest-hits scripture.

(Even cinematographer Oliver Wood seems uninspired to make ancient Jerusalem, inside or outside, pop onscreen.) Though the brief flashes of Messala’s combat prowess are perfunctorily chaotic, the sea battle is now a claustrophobic virtual-reality experience from a below-deck viewpoint, all flaming arrows, ramming ships, smashed beams, tossed bodies and tumbling underwater peril, with the warship’s mast as a floating cross Ben-Hur clings to at the end as a friendly metaphoric reminder.

[...] Read: 'Hardcore Henry' Producer Timur Bekmambetov on Head Explosions, Cameraman as Lead Actor

A software-tweaked riff on already iconic, scary-real greatness twice-delivered to moviegoers, this climactic race foregoes the crisp, dynamic framing and heroic pacing of the silent and 1959 versions in favor of current editing styles and action-fatigue aesthetics.

“Ben-Hur” is so chariot-branded a property, the sequence is even revived for the ludicrously conceived end credits, with names charging around the circus, kicking up digital dust.

[...] by this time, Bekmambetov has already wound everything down with crucifixion and miracles in quick succession, and a contrived, upbeat twist on Wallace’s resolution of its central conflict.

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