Critic Reviews
87
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
positive
16(94%)
mixed
1(6%)
negative
0(0%)
Showing 17 Critic Reviews
100
There is solid dramatic substance, purposeful and intriguingly contrasted character portrayals and, let's come right out with it, sheer pictorial poetry that is sweeping and savage, intimate and lusty, tender and bitter sweet.
100
Spartacus' merry rabble swarms across country to face a Roman army that, seen from a distance, resembles either a group of ants moving in perfect formation or living chessboard squares marching in order — an unbeatable, fascist machine. It's a breathtaking moment, which forces you to realise that Kubrick (before CGI) had to command extras as rigidly as Crassus runs Rome.
100
Spartacus is still a remarkable epic--one of the greatest tales of the ancient world ever to hit the screen. It's especially strong, and more typical of Kubrick, in the first half--before satire gives way to sentiment.
100
A stirring classic.
100
Kubrick’s gladiator film is the pinnacle of sword-and-sandal epics, and who isn’t a sucker for stories about rebellious slaves? This is the kind of movie the Paramount’s screen was made for.
100
Spartacus stands up handsomely. At times it's even stirring, as in Woody Strode's performance as the African gladiator who, in sparing Spartacus' life, opens his eyes. Spartacus is one of Hollywood's great comic strips. [3 May 1991, p.45]
100
Spartacus isn't the greatest epic ever made, but it's head and shoulders above most of the sword-and-sandal wheezers that came out in the '50s and '60s. And, given the prohibitive costs of shooting an epic today, it's the kind of movie we're not likely to see anymore -- except in well-deserved revivals like this one. [13 May 1991, p.E1]
91
The one scene with a hint of the eccentrically detached brilliance that would come to define ”Stanley Kubrick Movies” is the climactic battle, in which marching blocks of Roman soldiers are mowed down by fire: It’s war as the greatest halftime show ever choregraphed. Until then, Spartacus envelops you in the sort of bedazzled hero worship Hollywood never quite managed to bring off this rousingly again.
90
It's hard to conceive of a sword-and-sandals epic with greater sweep or grandeur than Spartacus...For majestic, mind-blowing sequences, you're spoilt for choice.
90
This may be the most literate of all the spectacles set in antiquity.
