← Back to Reviews
 

Lawrence of Arabia




Lawrence Of Arabia
David Lean, 1962

THis has always been one of those movies for me that I put off watching for so long just because of it's near 4 hour runtime. I was so absolutely wrong, actually I feel like hitting myself because I put of watching it for so long. I'm literally blown away right now, because it was just that amazing. Easily the most epic movie I've ever seen. It's really like 2001: A Space Odyssey, except it takes place in the desert instead of space. I loved how they broke it up into two parts, hell they even had an intermission in it. It gave me a little break to stand up and walk around a bit so I wouldn't get tired when I watched the second half.

Something that was really unique is that before the movie started, during the intermission, and after the credits, the screen basically just went black and it's amazing score started playing. It's just something that I haven't seen done before, but it worked great because the score was so amazing. The scenery is one of the best things about this, they really had some beautiful shots of the desert in this. I'm sure this would be great to see in Blu-Ray, but it'd be even better seeing it on a movie screen.

I loved the first half a lot more than the second. I'm actually pretty surprised because the second half is more of a revenge part, and I tend to like watching revenge. I think the main thing I don't like is what seems to happen to Lawrence duing it. He just seems to completely lose it, he was so inspirational in the first half, and then it just all disappears in the second half. Peter O'Toole did a much better job acting wise during the second half than the first half, even if I didn't like the character as much. He still did a great job in the first half, though, I don't want to sound like he didn't. He sure did a great job for this to be his first role ever in a movie.

This is easily one of the greatest movies ever made, and I really feel like putting it in my top 10, hell probably even top 5. I've been seeing so many great movies recently, though, that I'm just confused with my top 10. I don't know, it's really weird. If you've been putting this one off, like I was doing, do yourself a favor and go and watch it as soon as you can, because it really is as great as people make it out to be. This is probably my favorite movie in AFI's top 10.