Customer Reviews
Epics to see before you die No.1 - By: JohnHoppy, 18 Dec 2008 
"I'm Spartacus!" "No, I'm Spartacus!" "No, I'm Spartacus!" - All that arguing, no wonder there was a battle. Meanwhile Tonicurtius & Larry Olivierus are going round looking for oysters & snails, what's that all about? Anyway the final score was Romans MMCVI, Slaves MXXIV. And Spartacus kills Tonicurtius to save him from a fate worse than death! The End. Well, historical inaccuracies & weaker second half aside, this is still the greatest of the epics. Kirk should have got an award just for helming this one against all the odds. I'd better not spoil it by saying Spartacus' body wasin fact never found (!), but if there's a dry eye after the final scene, you must have icein your veins.
Good, Only it Doesn't Seem Like Kubrick - By: Mr. A. E. Hall, 01 Oct 2006 
Spartacus is perhaps Stanley Kubrick's oddest film,in that it is 'normal'. It is a Roman epic, one o0f many produced around the 1950s & early 1960s but is one of the better ones. It does not quite measure up to Ben Hur but is still very good.
Kirk Douglas, Jean Simmons et al deliver great performances & the battle scenes are more gory than you would expect, & of course there is the now legendary 'I'm Spartacus, I'M Spartacus, I'M Spartacus' scene. It makes for a very entertaining few hours.
The film falls short of the great man's other work because of two points: Firstly, it could have been directed by anyone; the obcessive perfectionism & innovatism appear absent it what is a more standard epic. Also, the dialogue is often a bit corny, which given how the film is so heroic, nearly proves fatal.
Overall, Spartacus is very good but not incredible, but certainly worth watching.
