By Thomas M. Puhr
Kirk
Douglas leads an army of freed slaves against ancient Rome in Stanley Kubrick’s
sword-and-sandal exercise. Despite the occasional flash of brilliance—be it a campy
exchange (Laurence Olivier explaining his preference for “both snails and
oysters” to an alarmed Tony Curtis), an awe-inspiring tableau (the Roman army assuming
geometrically flawless formations), or a shock of violence (a severed limb
erupting with fire hydrant–red blood)—the film is interminable. Dalton Trumbo’s
screenplay, in associating the ancients with a morally bankrupt America, anticipates
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey: a spectacle that will only exhaust
audiences when it’s as old as Spartacus.
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