Spartacus: War of the Damned [Blu-ray]

(Updated 4/12/13, 9/4/13)The Spartacus saga on Starz has given us some of the most powerful and dramatic television of the past decade, and this final season may just be the best of the lot. Spartacus: War of the Damned picks up maybe a year after the stunning finale of Spartacus: Vengeance. Having taken his revenge against the Roman patricians that enslaved him and killed his wife and friends, Spartacus leads what is now an army of liberated slaves in all-out war against the Republic. He struggles with both the cunning Imperator leading the Romans against him and the growing tensions within his own army, mowing down legions and cities while gathering strength for what may become an epic battle for Rome itself.With this conclusion of the Spartacus series, Stephen DeKnight and company have achieved something quite rare in television, or anywhere else for that matter: an epic story simultaneously offering compelling plot, characters, action and drama, while staying remarkably close to (what we know of) the story of the real-life Spartacus. It's a brutal story, and the show pulls absolutely no punches in the telling, but despite that - or perhaps because of it - this is some of the finest television I've seen since M*A*S*H. Here's why:- With each season the scope of the story has grown, and the story line has become more suble and complex. War of the Damned is no exception. Spartacus and his army have Rome in a near-panic. The Senate enlists ultra-wealthy consul Marcus Crassus to hire an army and put down the rebellion. From the first episode we see that Spartacus is facing an equally intelligent, deadly and determined opponent in Crassus; this is as much a war of wills and cunning as it is of swords. Both commanders also have to deal with dissent and intrigue within their own ranks: Spartacus with Crixus's ongoing lust for strategy-free head-to-head combat, and Crassus with the struggle of wills between himself, his coming-of-age son Tiberius, and a young, mad-genius praetor named Gaius Julius Caesar. (Yeah - THAT Julius Caesar.)- Once again the cast has outdone themselves. In reviews of the previous three seasons I've noted one or two exceptional performances, a task which has grown steadily more difficult as the overall quality of the acting has continued to improve. This time around it's *really* hard to pick a standout; everyone involved with this show clearly gave their all and then some to wrap things up in style. I'll name two, but bear in mind that there are about a dozen ties for a very close third place:---- Liam McIntyre. It took him a few episodes in S:V to get comfortable with the daunting job of filling Andy Whitfield's sandals but fill them he did, and in WotD he has the role of the ruthless, idealistic warrior-king solidly nailed.---- Dustin Clare. This season he backed off on the gonzo just a notch and it *works*, making Gannicus the perfect rogue super-warrior with just a hint of weariness showing through. If he survives the series finale (airing in about 15 minutes as I write this) this is the guy I'd want to see in his own spinoff series.- Once again they've raised the bar with some of the best FX and cinematography on television. The directors had a little fun with their state-of-the-art camera platforms this time, giving us some slick POV and following shots as the actors whirl and tumble in battle, and even more ambitious and exciting movie-quality CGI. I'm looking forward to seeing the behind-the-scenes specials when the DVDs come out. And, once again, they've used all these nifty tools to give us some jaw-droppingly powerful and beautiful moments; see below for one of the better examples.- In my review of Spartacus: Vengeance, I made a few critical points in that the two post-Blood and Sand series tended to start slowly and, more importantly, that the story was in danger of becoming lost in the increasingly gratuitous and over-the-top sex and gore. I'm not so conceited as to think DeKnight and Co. read that review and instantly saw the error of their ways, but they've certainly listened to someone of like sentiment. This time around the story went into high gear literally from the first minute of the first episode and rarely let up afterward. The sex is still as explicit and the swordplay still as gory as ever, but they aren't shoving our faces in the latter as was becoming endemic in S:V; indeed, as in Blood and Sand, they're once again using it at times to genuine artistic effect.Best example: In episode eight, "Separate Paths," a major character is captured and beheaded by the Romans (not exactly a spoiler in *this* series) as his lover is forced to watch. A split-second before his end, the scene cuts to an extreme close-up of the woman, and we see the coup de grace reflected in her teared-up eye. Beautiful (as far as that word can apply to a beheading,) and ten times the impact of just letting us watch the victim spew a gallon of blood and collapse.The end of the series is about 45 minutes away as I write this, and what I said in my review of S:B&S stands now more than ever: If you have any interest at all in historical fiction and you can handle the TV-MA material, this series is an unqualified must-see. Five stars with blood-spattered laurel wreaths.(9/4) Discs in hand at last! So far I've watched episode 1 and the special features. As with S:V, the quality in 1080p, even for the featurettes, is amazing; razor-sharp video that shows off the attention to detail that was put into the sets, costumes and such - it's more like a ten-hour movie than a TV series. (As with the other season sets, that sharp detail also shows off some added, and at times quite gory, footage cut from the broadcast version.) The special features were imho a bit heavy on training (the "Spartacus Workout" - oy) and a bit light on production stuff, but you still get a lot of good supplemental material: interviews with past and present cast members including a too-brief chat with Andy Whitfield, some good candid behind-the-scenes material both on- and off-set, and a very good, extended interview with Stephen DeKnight on how the series came to be, and the challenges they faced when moving beyond the fixed sets of the first two seasons to the slopes of Vesuvius and the hills of Rome. You get a really good feel of the close camaraderie of the cast and crew both on- and off-camera, imho one of the major factors in making this show a success. All in all, well worth watching.

Title translation, Latin to English: "THE SPARTACUS LEGEND IN FULL, GHASTLY, BEAUTIFUL DETAIL"(ALSO, this review covers all three seasons)SPARTACUS is a giant leap for viewers of any screen, to maybe or maybe-not approve of. It's a paradigm-changer. Above all it seems REAL. Every scene, costume, background and kind of behavior is made real by thorough uncompromising historical research.Social, sexual, spiritual, government/politics, behavior, manners and mores are represented as were in 70 B.C. Details all attended. SPARTACUS' three seasons are all painstakingly written, art-directed, artistically shot. Superbly, dramatically envisioned, acted, recreated in ways that cry out THIS IS REAL. Sometimes uncomfortably real. (Something rare: No mood-reflecting background music, just the music, mostly horns, playing in that era to match action. Which works very well)For those who can stomach gore and perversity (sex, torture, murder) there are excesses; camera tricks emphasize blood-lust. Slo-mo shots in all episodes may be too much. CGI of blood spurting, heads rolling, limbs flying, intestines flailing. For shocking, violent sex orgies (surprisingly uncensored) or hideous torture scenes - all probably for the sake of reality of Roman life in the 70's (B.C.). Vivid background depictions of crude, cruel everyday life on streets or in luxurious palatial homes and official areas of privileged patricians add layers of information and action.There are no subtitles, just chapter titles. Far better, ingenious writing echos rhythms of spoken Latin. (60 years ago - why, I can't remember - I took Latin, vocabulary's 90% lost to me). Though I'm no linguist, the Latin cadence is conveyed in the English sound track and rhetoric seem as real as all else in this milestone production.Beyond often shockingly lurid moments, SPARTACUS offers sharp moral lessons. Like, slavery, suppression/population exploitation, excessive anything (ego, arrogance included) doesn't work for long. In fact, such have an inevitable and awful backlash on both perps and victims.You'll see the beauty of love, loyalty, ethics and allegiance too.BTW, I'm no shill for upgrading video and audio electronics; but this truly magnificent mini-series seems a good reason to upgrade to a Blu-Ray player - which you probably know remarkably upgrades video and audio for most any DVD format.SPARTACUS is the most uncompromising film/series recommendation I've ever made. BUT - Caveat Emptor. . .This Spartacus is not for family viewing or for those with puritanical leanings or prone to psychotic violence - like, how close dare we come to porn and excessive, vivid, glorified violence in mass media? Still, SPARTACUS is a great closest-to historically-accurate presentation of seminal changes in Roman social, cultural, personal beliefs and values - while still offering incredible, engrossing, exciting entertainment. It is A Work of ArtA LastNote from the NYTimes 1000-best movies ever:"In today's excerpt - ancient Rome was built on slavery, and slaves constituted as much as forty percent of the population. This slavery could be unspeakably gruesome, whether it was the tens of thousands of slaves that died in the Roman mines in Spain, or those that were condemned to die as gladiators, and so Rome was left to ruthlessly crush innumerable slave rebellions:Spartacus, who was born north of Greece, in Thrace, received training in the Roman army as a barbarian 'auxiliary' (ally) before becoming a slave in 73 BCE. It's not clear why he was enslaved after serving Rome. However, his combat skills made him a natural candidate for the gladiator school at Capua, about one hundred miles from Rome.Here Spartacus and his fellow slaves learned how to entertain a Roman audience with dramatic hand-to-hand combat. Knowing they were going to their certain deaths, however, about eighty gladiators followed Spartacus into rebellion - using kitchen utensils as weapons. Before long they armed themselves with real weapons, slaughtering Roman soldiers who tried to stop them. Then they escaped to the countryside, where Spartacus incited a general slave uprising, attracting thousands of field workers to his cause. He led the rebel slaves to a mountaintop, where they built a fortified encampment.At first the Roman Senate viewed the uprising as a minor threat, but they soon learned better, and dispatched two commanders (praetors) to besiege the mountain and starve the slave army into submission. Spartacus launched a daring counterattack, ordering his soldiers to use vines to rappel down the side of the mountain.Of course the Roman Senate couldn't allow the slave rebellion to succeed, as the Roman economy was increasingly based on slavery. So they dispatched a new commander, Crassus, with twelve legions - a huge force - only to have the advance force of two legions annihilated by the slave army.(SPOILER AHEAD!)Spartacus now led the rebels south, to Sicily, where he planned torendezvous with pirates he'd hired to take them to safety. But the pirates never showed, and the slaves found themselves trapped on a narrow peninsula. ... Desperate, Spartacus decided he had no choice but to fight the Romans head on. Here the Romans finally defeated the rebel army, showing no mercy as they butchered sixty thousand runaway slaves, including women and children. Sixty-six hundred survivors were crucified along the Appian Way connecting Capua to Rome. However, the body of Spartacus was never found."PRODUCT LINKS ::I recall only two films at the level of SPARTACUS, both, superb and then some:Kingdom of Heaven (Director's Cut) [Blu-ray] / Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale [Blu-ray] - 4 1/2 hour International VersionAnd for the historically-oriented: Spartacus (50th Anniversary Edition) [Blu-ray] - Kirk Douglas producer/actor 194 minutesSony BDP-S3100 Blu-ray Disc Player with Wi-Fi

STARZ Spartacus series comes to a conclusion with this Season. We all wanted more, but that wouldve cost the storyline quite a bit. Drag it out too much and things fall apart. It was the right decision to end the series with a High, making fans and the companies very pleased. All of the actors/actresses made this series stand tall and strong, telling this iteration of history in its own way.