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In first century A.D., Flavius Silva (Peter O’Toole), commander in Roman Palestine, leads his forces in combat against the remaining Jewish Zealots who have taken refuge in the seemingly impregnable fortress of Masada. There, the engineering and military might of Rome faces the passion and ingenuity of Eleazar Ben Yair (Peter Strauss) and his people. Based on the novel "The Antagonists" by Ernest K. Gann, this epic, 4-part mini-series was shot on location in Israel.
Factory sealed DVD
Reviewer: AKDavisAK
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A Classic
Review: I remember watching this as a TV mini-series. We had planned a trip to Israel and wanted to see it again. Unfortunatley the trip was cancelled, but the movie was great.

Reviewer: Noel Serrano
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: SPLENDID AND CAPTIVATING EPIC
Review: Masada (Hebrew îöãä, pronounced Metzada, from îöåãä, metzuda, "fortress") is the name for a site of ancient palaces and fortifications in the South District of Israel on top of an isolated rock plateau, or large mesa, on the eastern edge of the Judean Desert overlooking the Dead Sea. After the First Jewish-Roman War (also known as the Great Jewish Revolt) a siege of the fortress by troops of the Roman Empire led to the mass suicide of Jewish rebels, who preferred death to surrender.According to Josephus, a first-century Jewish Roman historian, Herod the Great fortified Masada between 37 and 31 BCE as a refuge for himself in the event of a revolt. In 66 CE, at the beginning of the First Jewish-Roman War against the Roman Empire, a group of Jewish extremists called the Sicarii overcame the Roman garrison of Masada. After the destruction of the Temple, the jewish rebels and their families fled Jerusalem and settled on the mountain top, using it as a base for raiding Roman settlements.[1]The works of Josephus are the sole record of events that took place during the siege. According to modern interpretations of Josephus, the Sicarii were an extremist splinter group of the Zealots who were equally antagonistic to both Romans and other Jewish groups.[2] The Zealots (according to Josephus), in contrast to the Sicarii, carried the main burden of the rebellion, which opposed Roman rule of Judea (as the Roman province of Iudaea, its Latinized name).The Sicarii on Masada were commanded by Elazar ben Ya'ir (who may have been the same person as Eleazar ben Simon), and in 70 CE they were joined by additional Sicarii and their families that were expelled from Jerusalem by the Jewish population with whom the Sicarii were in conflict shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple.Archaeology indicates that they modified some of the structures they found there; this includes a building which was modified to function as a synagogue facing Jerusalem, (in fact, the building may originally have been one), although it did not contain a mikvah or the benches found in other early synagogues.[3] Remains of two mikvahs were found elsewhere on Masada.Wits and weapons clash in this 1981 epic chronicling a rebellion by Jewish Zealots against Roman rule. After Jerusalem falls to the Romans in 70 A.D., nearly a thousand Jewish rebels led by Eleazar ben Jair (Peter Strauss) withdraw to a mountaintop fortress 30 miles southeast of Jerusalem. There, fed by defiance and an unlimited supply of cistern water, they make their stand against Roman rule, now and then conducting surprise raids against Roman positions down below. Whenever the Romans retaliate, Eleazar goes them one better. He and his men burn grain supplies, poison wells and generally make life miserable for the Roman 10th Legion, encamped in the baking desert surrounding the fortress. Frustrated, the Roman general Cornelius Flavius Silva (Peter O'Toole) brings in a brilliant siege master, Rubrius Gallus (Anthony Quayle), to devise a way to breach the mountaintop stronghold. When Gallus begins construction of an earthen ramp up the mountainside, rebels rain down arrows on the Roman workers. Flavius then uses Jews from nearby villages to build the ramp. Meanwhile, Flavius makes several attempts to persuade the rebel Jews to surrender, promising they will live in peace and prosperity under Roman rule. But the Jews are adamant; they want only one thing: freedom, or, at the very least, limited freedom under a Roman-appointed Jewish governor. But after Roman Emperor Vespasian vetoes peace plans, the ramp continues to rise. When it is finished, the Romans pull a massive battering ram on wheels--another of Gallus's stratagems--up the ramp, and the stage is set for the final battle deciding the fate of the Jews. This film had at least three incarnations: as a 6-hour, 34-minute TV series in 1980, and then in trimmed-down versions in 1981 and 1984. Although the filmed-on-location Masada is based on history, parts of it are fictionalized.

Reviewer: Bold Consumer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Excellent! This is as close as we can get to the actual event
Review: Well done! Most of what we know about Masada comes from what Josephus wrote. Much of the rest of it comes from archeology. I'm just getting started studying about what was actually found at the site, which for years had been searched for and finally found in 1842, according to what I have read, initially surveyed in 1955-56, and a full-scale excavation done in 1963-65 by Israeli archeologist Yigael Yadin, with the help of hundreds of volunteers. This series was true to what I had remembered reading in Josephus. After viewing the story this week, I read the account in Josephus again and it was spot on. The setting was just as I had remembered it when I traveled to Masada last year.Now this is the way a historical drama ought to be done. We get to put names, faces, and emotions to the facts we already know. In this version, very little was added. That was what I was looking for, as factual an account as possible.Recently I read two novels about Masada. I enjoyed one of them very much: Masada, The Last Fortress by Gloria D. Miklowitz. I think it might have been intended for a young audience, but it was a beautiful novel of what the personal lives of the people 'might' have been like, based on what we know. It got into the daily lives, romance, the question of whether they had weddings and other celebrations. The other novel I read was an author's warped and distorted version that was loosely based on facts. It was also a very slow, boring slog of a story.This series is much more interesting, because it includes both positives and negatives about the people who make up this story, both on the side of the rebels and the Romans. Nobody comes out of it faultless. There are times when I wanted to take leaders of both sides and shake some sense into them. They made mistakes and everyone faced the consequences.The mini-series Masada: The Last Fortress was able to stay true to facts and add enough romantic interest and drama to get past the intensity of the story being told without keeping us depressed. We know there were women and children there and the story gave us just the right exposure to what they must have gone through, knowing that they would not be able to live out their lives. It shows the parents carefully communicating with each other about what was to come, protecting their innocent and trusting children from how (and when) final, inevitable events were to play out as much as they could, as any parent would. We got to see the action from the Roman side to an amazing extent, because Josephus is writing from the side of the 'victors', in this case victors who didn't get the victory they thought they would when they won this battle.There will never be complete agreement about what happened at Masada or why it happened, of course, but I was so pleased to see that the version, Masada - The Complete Epic Mini-Series, stayed as true to fact as is reasonable. I will recommend this series to anyone who is interested in the siege against the rock called Masada.

Reviewer: Wayne Bridge
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I ordered "used" because the new option was way too costly for an item that's destined for the same bin that holds 45 rpm records, 8-tracks, cassettes, and VCRs! So it came as advertised, good as new, works great, and showed up at least a week earlier than advised.Peter O'Toole is superb in the role of Flavius Silva.

Reviewer: Brian Finley
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: wasn't in original dvd box packaging.

Reviewer: Ms B. Ibanez
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Great story. Great acting.

Reviewer: Peter Eismann
Rating: 1.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Der Film an solcher ist ok. Leider nur in englischer Sprache, eine Einstellung auf Deutsch und auch deutscheUntertitel ist nicht möglich.Beste Grüße Peter Eismann

Reviewer: Justme Vancouver
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: This movie arrived right on schedule of the projected delivery time. It was carefully wrapped and arrived via registered mail. I've just finished watching the movie which is in excellent condition! This was a brilliant mini series way back when and it is still as good as I remembered.