Masada: DVD Review (2007)

From Koch Vision is the release of the 1981 miniseries "Masada," with director Boris Sagal helming a nearly seven-hour film shot on location in the Israeli desert.

It's a gripping story, as big and as sprawling as the desert itself, with Peter O'Toole rising to full power as the Roman warrior Cornelius Flavius Silva, who in first century A.D. was charged to rid a stronghold of Jews from the mountains of Masada.

He met his match in Eleazar ben Yair (an excellent Peter Strauss), leader of the Jews, with each man gradually coming to realize in the other something of an equal. The movie was a massive undertaking and it shows, particularly when Rome decides it no longer will wait for anything as trivial as negotiations.

So, yes, the present-day echoes abound.

Grade: A-