Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar is another mini series by the DeAngelis Group. Like some of their other Producions one sees a few well know actors, such as Richard Harris and Christopher Walken , as well as some local actors of Germany and Italy(Heino Ferch, Tobias Moretti).

The picture itself, even not indepth to the real Caesar story, gives an nice picture of the times of the roman empire. Nice acting, as well as a well combined cast, give a nice viewing pleasure.

Jeremy Sisto gives a new angel to a few on Caesar,Chris Noth (Sex & the City) gives a very good performance and Harris plays a Sulla, which you enjoy dying.

All in all, the about 3 hour mini series is a nice evening view for the family, bringing love, war/action as well as history into your living room.

I enjoyed this miniseries. I have some objections though. There are several factual errors, like Pompey did not crush the slave rebellion (Crassus and Cicero did), there was no law against armies south of the Rubicon - Caesar just transgressed his jurisdiction to do so. Important characters and events like Catilina's revolt, Crassus, Octavian, the war in Spain, etc. are totally left out. The characters are very shallow. Caesar himself is to sympathetic - he was a shrewd and ruthless politician.

more to entertain than to inform and, sadly it fails to do the former. in 82 BC when the film opens Caesar (born 100 BC) was 18, yet they would have you believe that he had an eight year old daughter. also seems to be an unknown which was not the case. as for Cato, he appears to be years older than Caesar in the film yet in reality was three years younger.

also to clarify another reviewer's comments; Cato was Brutus's uncle. he--Cato--shared a mother with Servillia, the mother of Brutus. she was the sister of Livius Drusus, the tribune of the plebeians who was assassinated around 108. her original husband, Caepio father of Servillia, was killed in the east. she then took up with M. Porcius Cato's father. according to Plutarch, Sulla died after having relinquished the office of dictator and retired to the countryside to spend the end of his days in total debauchery.

also missing from the film is Crassus and Cicero. to omit these characters is akin to omitting w.t. Sherman and Jefferson Davis from any story about the civil war. as a result the movie is careless in its regard for history. one of the early scenes in the movie involving the pirates is so ignorant of history as to make the viewer throw up their hands in disgust and say 'why was the primary text ignored?' the story of Caesar and the pirates is one of the best stories of his life and it was not given any justice. if one would be interested in roman history i strongly suggest reading up on the harrowing tale of Caesar and the pirates. in the end this movie was in terms of historical accuracy below even the HBO series Rome which was also fairly free in its interpretation of roman history but much more entertaining.

I'm a big fan of Roman history. I'm also a big fan of Richard Harris, Christopher Walken, Chris Noth, and any number of the interesting actors in this production. But that fandom was not enough to make me really love this uneven, choppy, and incredibly inaccurate portrayal of Julian Rome. Was this *supposed* to be "Julius Caesar, the Good Parts Version* (*with just enough bad left in to make him seem human and not perfect)" ?

It felt like the writers desperately wanted to make Caesar a good guy and not deserving of the murder plot ultimately hatched against him on the Ides of March. Don't get me wrong -- Julius Caesar had many good points and did a lot for history. But he was also a womanizer, despotic at times, and many other sins too numerable to mention in this review, any of which make more sense as to why the Senate would want to murder him than the reasons shown in this miniseries.

That is the worst crime in this series, I fear -- it makes no sense as to why so many would hate him enough to murder him. What they showed was he was doing many *good* things for Rome, with a few mistakes (like his affair and child with Cleopatra) thrown in to make him look a bit more human.

Anyway. I enjoyed parts of this mini-series. Ultimately, I was disappointed on both a historical level and a dramatic level. The second part felt extremely choppy, and the last 45 minutes were extremely rushed -- they HAD to get Caesar to the Senate so they could stab him, after all, of course they had to rush. IMHO, better to have taken an extra hour or two to tell the tale properly than to try to fit it into the time they allowed.

Hmmm...and thinking on it, this miniseries was decidedly written by someone who adored Caesar, and preferred to praise him, not to bury him.

Covering the period from Sulla's occupation of Rome in 82 BC to Julius Caesar's murder in 44 BC, this is a fairly good biography. Some of the details of Caesar's career are touched on only briefly, and some relationships are inaccurate. E.G. Brutus was Cato's son-in-law, Portia was Cato's daughter. The film says Brutus was Cato's nephew. One may be disappointed not to get the dramatic aftermath of the murder, but that would take at least another hour. One might wish for better acting here and there, but you seldom get really great made-for-TV movies. As a lifelong history buff, I found the film entertaining, even instructive once in a while.