Review: Exodus: Gods and Kings

The story of Moses (Christian Bale), the adopted son of Egyptian Pharaoh Seti (John Turturro), and treated as a brother by Ramses II (Joel Edgerton). That is, until Moses discovers that he is in fact the son of a Hebrew, and this is a time where Hebrews were kept as slaves in the empire. When Ramses II, who eventually ascends to power (even though his father much favoured the adopted Moses) discovers this, Moses is exiled. Soon after this, Moses apparently receives visions from God (in the form of an 11 year-old boy who may or may not actually exist and who may actually just be a stand-in for God anyway), that he is to free his people, the Israelites from slavery. This will set him on a course in collision with his former brother Ramses. Not really fair, though is it? I mean, one of them has God on his team! Sigourney Weaver appears briefly as Ramses’ mother Tuya (who never much liked Moses), Sir Ben Kingsley plays a Hebrew slave, Tara Fitzgerald is Moses’ birth sister, Ben Mendelsohn plays Hegep, a corrupt viceroy, and Aaron Paul wonders why the hell he’s in an ancient epic playing slave Joshua (I have no idea either, Aaron!).

 

Essentially a retelling of “The Ten Commandments”, this 2014 epic from Ridley Scott (“Alien”, “Black Rain”, “American Gangster”, “Prometheus”) lacks a strong central villain and wastes both Sir Ben Kingsley and Sigourney Weaver, but is otherwise pretty solid stuff. It’s certainly better than Scott’s “Kingdom of Heaven” and “Robin Hood”, though it won’t make you forget Cecil B. De Mille anytime soon.

 

There’s an occasional slight artificiality with some of the obvious CGI, but it’s still a really good-looking film well-shot by Dariusz Wolski (“The Crow”, “Sweeney Todd”), and appropriately epic-looking. I’m not normally a Christian Bale fan (I can usually see the gears turning inside him), but this role is a pretty good fit for him. I like him in Method-free, straight up serious mode (apparently he did have to lose the weight he gained for “American Hustle”, though), even if guyliner doesn’t serve him particularly well. In fact, neither he nor Joel Edgerton fail to look silly in that regard. Edgerton is for me, the film’s main problem. It’s not because he’s clearly doing a Hugo Weaving vocal impersonation, that I actually got a kick out of (And no one can convince me that’s not what he’s doing!). No, the problem is that as essentially the central villain, he’s especially weak, almost passive. A completely unsubtle Ben Mendelsohn walks off with the film in a slimy supporting role (he’s the perfect combo of Dan Duryea, Peter Lorre, and Claude Rains). However, neither he nor Edgerton pose any threat or offer up any sense of menace whatsoever. Edgerton is OK in the role as written, but you can’t do one of these films and have all the villains be weak and/or cowardly. It leaves the central conflict somewhat one-sided, and Bale might as well be wearing a fucking cape for cryin’ out loud (Hey, wait a minute…) Since Mendelsohn’s role is smaller, I think it’s Edgerton that is the problem. It’s not that he’s bad, he’s clearly doing his job. I just think it might’ve been a better idea to cast the role with someone who is more naturally forceful or predisposed to portraying menace/intimidation on screen to compensate, like Michael Fassbender, Ben Foster (my choice), Edward Norton, Tom Hardy, or Oscar Isaac. A decade ago, Ralph Fiennes could’ve easily tackled it. It’s nice to see Sir Ben Kingsley in a film one can actually take seriously for a change and he doesn’t disappoint. It’s the size of his role that disappoints. I can’t believe Ridley Scott has reunited with Sigourney Weaver and cast Gandhi in his film, and given them sweet bugger-all to do. On the other hand, a nearly unrecognisable John Turturro fits into this kind of thing a lot better than you might think and makes his cameo role work.

 

I liked a lot of this film, including a terrific croc attack scene, and in its second half the film goes all batshit Irwin Allen (biblical) disaster movie and becomes quite fun. The river of blood and plague or frogs are amazing to behold, as is the subsequent swarm (not to be confused with Irwin Allen’s notorious 1978 “The Swarm”, a fucking terribly boring killer bee movie with Sir Michael Caine paying for an extension on his summer house). The sky itself looks all kinds of ‘Holy shit, it’s literally the Apocalypse!’. However, for me, it’s the final stages that are truly most memorable, such as the amazing sight of chariot-driving horses taking on a perilous cliff-side journey, and the phenomenal-looking climax on a beach during a hellacious storm, the film’s best scene by far. It won’t please everyone, but the possibly invisible boy representing God in this, is an interesting interpretation from my Agnostic Atheist perspective. I hadn’t seen anything like that before. The film has got a bit of a dour, dark quality to its main character reminiscent of “Braveheart” and “Noah”. I guess its point is that to do ‘right’ is not always a pleasant and clean job. I must say, though, that the whole ‘outcast comes back to fight his former people’ thing is getting a tad tired by now. One big plus is the strong, Maurice Jarre-like music score by Alberto Iglesias (Almodovar’s excellent “The Skin I Live In”), with occasional doses of ‘O Fortuna’-esque operatic stuff too.

 

This is a pretty good ancient epic, I liked quite a lot of it (Ben Mendelsohn is a limp-wristed, weasely delight), but I think I’ll still stick to the 1956 film version of “The Ten Commandments” for my biblical epic fix. It may not have this film’s technical qualities, but it has stronger villainous threats, and manages (and appropriates) its big-name cast a whole lot better. The screenplay is by the quartet of Adam Cooper & Bill Collage (the highly disappointing “Tower Heist”), Jeffrey Caine (“GoldenEye”, “The Constant Gardener”), and Steven Zaillian (“Awakenings”, “Schindler’s List”, “Gangs of New York”).

 

Rating: B-