Exodus: Gods and Kings Review

I'm quite disappointed in the biblical epics that were released this year. Both were done by talented directors that are known for creating challenging films that stick with you. However, they have both stuck with me for all the wrong reasons. Darren Aronofsky took on the story of Noah's Ark, and as I said in my review, I was not too keen on it. I thought the endless amount of inaccuracies were distracting, and the movie was ultimately a shallow exercise in spectacle. And here's Exodus: Gods and Kings, a movie about Moses and his story. I was equally let down, if not more so with Ridley Scott's attempt at recreating a classic biblical tale. Apart from a genuinely good performance by Christian Bale, this is a dour and utterly soulless movie which fails to capture the essence and the message of its source material.

Ridley Scott has directed some really great movies in his career. His 1979 film Alien is widely considered one of the best horror movies - and sci-fi movies - of all-time. His dystopian noir film Blade Runner is also generally considered one of the greatest science fiction movies ever made. With Gladiator, Scott turned his focus on epic filmmaking. He's since made films like Kingdom of Heaven and Robin Hood, which both attempted and ultimately failed to match Gladiator's level of quality. Exodus: Gods and Kings is the latest attempt by the director to make a great epic. And, as you gathered in my first paragraph, he's failed once again.

The cast of the film, when looked at on paper, is quite good. Christian Bale, who is one of my favorite actors, portrays Moses, and I thought he did a great job. He was probably my favorite thing about the movie. He was just about the only interesting and layered character in the entire film. Joel Edgerton plays Ramesses II, the eventual Pharaoh of Egypt and essentially Moses' brother. His performance was a little bizarre at times, though there were moments when I thought he was doing a pretty good job. All in all, though, Bale was the bright spot of the cast, even with illustrious actors like Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley, John Turturro, and Aaron Paul making appearances.

Before I delve into some of the things that bothered me about Exodus: Gods and Kings, let me just talk about some of the things that I liked. As I mentioned previously, Christian Bale's strong central performance helped keep the film watchable for the most part, even during some of the more cringe-worthy dramatic sequences. The effects were another highlight of the film. Ridley Scott knows how to make a great looking movie, and some of the visuals were undeniably impressive, and added to the film's ambitious scope. It feels like a big movie, and certainly earns the label of an "epic", at least in terms of its size.

I also enjoyed the first 20 minutes or so of Exodus: Gods and Kings. The opening battle sequence was well-done, and the complex relationship between Moses and Ramesses was set up. The problem with those two positives is that after the opening battle sequence, we don't get anything resembling excitement until the plagues show up more than an hour later, and the two lead characters make very little contact with each other until the end. After this period of time in the beginning that I liked, the movie slows down considerably both in pace, and in its narrative. Little happens, and the stuff that does happen is either completely inaccurate to the source material or ineffectively executed.

One of the biggest problems I had with Noah was that Aronofsky took so many liberties while telling the story that it ended up being almost unrecognizable as an adaption of Noah's Ark. The way Ridley Scott used artistic license so freely in Exodus: Gods and Kings reminded me a whole lot of Noah. I'm sure there are some who would argue that liberties should be taken to keep the story fresh. I'm fine with a few changes here and there, but it's when they start messing with the very foundations on which the story is built that it starts to bother me.

The following paragraph contains a minor spoiler about the way Scott portrayed God himself. If you wish not to know about it before seeing the film, then just skip over to the next paragraph. In Exodus: Gods and Kings, God is portrayed as a small boy. That's not just the body He inhabits, it's also the personality He's assigned. And I personally found that to be an issue. One of the points of Moses' story is to display that God is in control of everything and that those who follow Him will be taken care of. That wasn't the feeling I got from the God in this movie. He just felt like a little whiny child that was sort of making everything up as He went along. I found that quite off-putting and very distracting.

There were also a number of plot points which were inexplicably different from the source material. For example, Moses writes the Ten Commandments himself in the film. That takes away from the importance of God in the story, giving all the significance and power over to Moses. That was just one instance of many where I felt the movie was in a way belittling God and glorifying the person of Moses. Whether you believe this story really happened or not, that's shifting the entire message of what the Bible lays out. And that bothered me quite a bit.

There's also the issue of whitewashing. It's interesting that so many ancient Egyptians were both Caucasian and British. I'm not going to go on and on about the race of the actors - although it is awfully inaccurate to portray these people this way. I'm just going to say that I wish more directors would take a chance with films like this and actually cast actors that look like what the people during this time period looked like. I understand that slapping a big name actor like Christian Bale on the poster will probably increase ticket sales. And I'm not arguing that Bale is bad in the role; as I've mentioned a number of times, I thought Bale was great. But, I think it would be nice to see someone go for total realism in that area.

There are a handful of enjoyable aspects of Ridley Scott's biblical epic. Christian Bale's lead performance was impressive, as were the visuals and the film's epic scope. I felt there were just too many additive parts to the story that were totally unnecessary and diverged completely from the source material and ultimately distracted me from enjoying the movie more than I did. The pacing was terrible, and Scott seemed to lose the story amid the spectacle. I left the theater with an unsatisfied feeling which reminded me of how I felt after watching Noah. I'm hoping one of these days there will be a biblical movie which really knocks it out of the park. Until that day, we're stuck with yet another underwhelming effort in Ridley Scott's recent filmography.

D+