The 1959 movie Ben Hur is one of my favorites. Although it has a subtitle "A Story of the Christ" the William Wyler movie has under-emphasized the Christian theme and concentrated on the revenge. Charlton Heston is superb in his portrayal of Judah Ben Hur, especially in the chariot race scenes and in general.

I discovered the Kindle edition of the original Lewis Wallace novel and downloaded it with excitement. Oh God! What a bore! It is very long, didactic, uses a very archaic style. The scriptwriter was very skillful, to carve a good story out of an awful text.