David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia tells the story of the actual T.E. Lawrence - Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence begins the film as a British Lieutenant during World War 1 who is sent to meet with Arab officials. Once there, he leads an Arab army against a group of Turkish soldiers and unexpectedly captures a strategic base despite being severely outnumbered. He becomes a hero to the Arabs and is promoted to major. As the film continues he becomes a bigger hero to the Arabs and leads more successful attacks. As the film runs 3 hours and 47 minutes, there is quite a lot of other things that happen, but this is the general outline.

Playing the title character is Peter O'Toole who delivers one of the greatest performances in the history of cinema. He was nominated for an Oscar for his performance, but did not win as Gregory Peck won for To Kill a Mockingbird. Peck's performance in that film is pretty good, but I'd have given the award to O'Toole - if nothing else he was on screen for twice as long. Other notable cast members include Alec Guinness who plays, quite convincingly, an Arab prince. The film also includes significant roles by Claude Rains, Anthony Quinn, and Omar Sharif (who was nominated for best supporting actor). The film is also notable for not having a single spoken line by a female actress.

While the film could be simplified to call it nothing but a guy wandering around in the desert for almost four hours, there is more to it than that. The desert sequences are filmed quite well and there are plenty of action sequences thrown in with the wandering that are also very well-done. The film's score is fairly memorable and won one of this film's seven Oscars.

Overall, this is a masterpiece of cinema and universally regarded as one of the better films of all-time and perhaps the greatest British film ever made. It is the epitome of an epic film and was named the greatest epic film of all-time by the American Film Institute. The film won 7 Oscars including best picture. Despite the accolades, the film is not perfect. At times the historical accuracy can be questionable at best. Like most films of this length, it can get a little slow at times. Finally, I found the ending to be a little sudden and anti-climactic. Still, the positives far outweigh the negatives and this film should be seen by anyone who wants to seriously consider themselves a fan of classic cinema.

91/100
A-

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