Review: Exodus: Gods and Kings

Criticisms of casting Caucasians to play characters of Middle Eastern and North African descent aside, Exodus: Gods and Kings is bloated with a minefield of issues, including performances that are at warring wavelengths; a screenplay cobbled together by a quartet of screenwriters, half of whom have focused on prestige dramas whilst the other half concentrated on comedies; and a series of spectacles (the Ten Plagues, the parting of the Red Sea) that are spectacular but curiously underwhelming.

Director Ridley Scott's telling of Moses' exile from his Egyptian home to carry out God's will and fulfill his destiny as the liberator of the Israelites from 400 years of slavery seems straightforward enough. Moses (Christian Bale) and Ramses (Joel Edgerton) are brothers in spirit though not in blood. Their bond, already at risk by the Pharaoh's (John Turturro) esteem of Moses over his own son Ramses, is tested when the high priestess prophesises that a battle shall occur wherein a leader shall be saved, and that saviour shall someday lead. Indeed, the prediction comes to fruition - Moses saves Ramses on the battlefield and Ramses wonders if he should get rid of this potential usurper of his throne.

Having survived Ramses' hesitancy, Moses sets off for the city of Pithom to check on the Hebrews, who have been toiling to build the latest monuments to power for their Egyptian masters. The viceroy (Ben Mendelsohn, whose slithery, exuberantly louche turn is a wonder to behold) tells Moses that the conniving and combative slaves are spawning faster than they're dying; the overpopulation ensures an endless workforce, but it could also lead to sedition. The viceroy demands more troops to maintain order, or he'll start thinning the herd. Moses meets with the Hebrew elders to assess their intentions; instead, he learns the truth of his lineage - he is a Hebrew, not an Egyptian - and that reveal prompts Ramses to banish Moses from the kingdom.

Nine years pass, and Moses is a husband and father but still very much a man with a fractured identity. His intelligence and reason have always prevented him from the Egyptians' belief in signs and foretellings, but he also cannot fully embrace the concept of the Lord that the Hebrews worship. It's therefore fitting, and not a little daring, when the God he first encounters appears to him in the form of a young boy. It's a bold move in a film deprived of such provocations, yet also in line with the more wrathful God of the Old Testament. It's not wholly improbable that a skeptic like Moses should view God as a mercurial, capricious, vengeful figure. What sensible God, after all, would unleash such a deluge of destruction to bring Ramses to heel and reward the faithful with their freedom?

The film rouses itself from the doldrums as the plagues are unleashed: crocodiles are conjured by the filmmakers to attack fishermen whose blood turns the Nile red; frogs swarm the streets and the palace; poisoned fish congest the waters, their rotting carcasses bringing about maggots and flies; Egyptian faces and flesh are soon pockmarked with boils; livestock are deceased; crops are devastated by locusts; thunderstorms of hail and fire come pouring down; a deep and heavy darkness descends; and, most devastatingly, every Egyptian firstborn son fails to live another day. The parting of the Red Sea is no less impressively rendered and yet...one doesn't feel the overwhelming sense of awe delivered by the comparatively less advanced special effects of Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 production.

There's a general sense of the noncommittal, of the not quite there in Exodus: Gods and Kings, along with a schizophrenia that is no doubt rooted in the script but that could have been better controlled by Scott. The actors fall into three camps: the sobersided (Bale, Ben Kingsley), the campy (Edgerton and Mendelsohn), and the underused (Turturro, Sigourney Weaver, Aaron Paul). The dialogue veers from the reflective to something that wouldn't be out of place in a Real Housewives episode.

Exodus: Gods and Kings

Directed by: Ridley Scott

Written by: Adam Cooper, Bill Collage, Jeffrey Caine, Steven Zaillian

Starring: Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, Ben Kingsley, Ben Mendelsohn, John Turturro, Sigourney Weaver, Maria Valverde, Aaron Paul, Tara Fitzgerald, Ewen Bremmer, Indira Varma