Better than expected, but rushed

The first two acts were solid, but after the chariot race scene, it was basically "ok guys, lets see how quickly we can film the final act and go home". I'm guessing they wanted to move further away from the "tale of the christ" subplot and just focus on the actiony parts.

I thought they didn't give enough essence to the Jesus scenes. Both when Judah is being led to the galleys and Jesus helps him with water was a powerful scene in the 1959 version and when Judah encounters Jesus during the final act in the 1959 version, they REALLY just rushed through it as if they were hesitant to even include it at all.

Judah and messala were both played well, however no other character stuck with me. Quintus was pretty much erased, pontius pilate was essentially commodus 2.0, and morgan freeman was decent, but forgettable.