Exodus Gods and Kings is a biblical epic, telling the story of how Moses led his people away from slavery and the tight grip of Pharaoh Ramses, under the guidance and leadership of God. This story had been covered plenty of times within the annals of Hollywood history, the most famous case is Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 film The Ten Commandments starring Charlton Heston as Moses. This is essentially a remake of the film and follows the story pretty closely. A brief synopsis is that Moses (played here by Christian Bale) having been adopted by Pharaoh and is his general to his entire army. Ramses (played by Joel Edgerton) his half brother, grows more power mad as construction of the pyramids grows in new heights and soon Moses becomes further disillusioned from his tyrannical family when a slave (played by Ben Kingsley) informs him of his true Hebrew origins. Later on, he wanders alone into the desert and seeks solace with a local priest’s daughter, whom he later marries, has a son, and lives out nine years with them within a peaceful commune. God, grown weary of the Jews enslavement and cruel treatment, thrusted upon by Ramses, orders Moses to lead them away from slavery and start a new. Finally returning home, he warns Ramses to let his people go otherwise there are bad omens to come and the rest is pretty self-explanatory.
A story that is as huge as this, is guided by Ridley Scott in slow brushstrokes. It would be unwise to assume that the treatment would necessarily be eventful every minute or so, the film deliberately takes its time to set up the inner conflict with Moses and where his true spiritual loyalties lie. And while at times that can be quite moving, for the most part it’s not very compelling. There was just something to the 1956 epic that, while character development or subtlety was in short supply, there was a great charm and longevity to the effects, used to create not only the plague sequences but also the separation of the ocean that God conjures up to help Moses and his people and wash away those that defied him – which was a true part of that film’s legacy. This version from Scott does have the updated CGI technology to create the waves as gigantic and the plagues and omens as stunning and even creepy in parts, but when the film relies on that alone to tell its story in 2014, it just isn’t enough.
Christian Bale and Joel Edgerton are cast as Moses and Ramses respectively, and while racial insensitivity notwithstanding, they don’t make for very compelling leads. The arc of Ramses going from this loyal and positive brother to the tyrannical dictator that he would become, is not evident here, and so we are left with someone who is pretty one-dimensional. Christian Bale doesn’t fare much better, the script doesn’t have much to work with apart from either look sombre or react to miraculous things around him. Even background characters that are set up, such as Aaron Paul’s slave character Joshua, who is effectively Moses’s confidante, for the most part is simply reduced to taking a step back to Moses’s scenes of speech giving and God confiding.
The film’s biggest problem is that it certainly doesn’t distinguish itself from other versions of the story and what it does provide is essentially a visual feast of spectacle, and while I’m not exactly opposed to that, the film needed so much more to really stand out on its own and so it just comes across as pointless. To create an updated version of the story and deliver the message of the significance of the story of the Ten Commandments is an admirable one and it’s certainly a very beautiful and atmospheric piece of work but without the compelling characters and with a sluggish pace to be burdened with, the film is unfortunately redundant. I’d say see it if you are purely driven by spectacle alone but others need not apply.
2/5
Filmlife 