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Film: Exodus - Gods and Kings
Cast: Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, Ben Kingsley
Directed by: Ridley Scott
Duration: 2 hrs 30 mins
Rating: * * *
Hollywood has been evidently
gravitating towards religious themes and if you make it into a big spectacle
then box office success is guaranteed. This year itself we have seen couple of
high profile directors revert to the Old Testament, Darren Aronofsky with Noah
and now Ridley Scott with Exodus - Gods and Kings, the director has made some
memorable sci-fi films like Alien and
Blade Runner and the crowd pleaser, Gladiator.
Scott who is 77, is still on the
money when it comes to creating a larger than life film with stunning visuals.
The letdown is the screenplay, with four writers sharing the credit it could
well be a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth.
Set in ancient Egypt, a grown up
Moses (Christian Bale dressed as a warrior) is good friends with Ramses (Joel
Edgerton, dressed in a skirt, long one) and the Pharoah (John Turturro) prefers
the adopted Moses to his son. The two men have the odd disagreement especially
when it comes to the slaves. After his identity is discovered (he is a Hebrew)
Moses is banished, he meets a girl in the desert gets married and almost lives
happily ever after.
Till God appears in the form of a
10 year old boy telling Moses not to sit tight and keep an eye on the
atrocities committed by Ramses. Moses
takes it very seriously, after all it is the word of God, invisible to everyone
else albeit.
The plagues strikes Pithom after
Moses tries to reason with Ramses – crocodiles eat up humans, insects and frogs
take over the city and the sea turns blood red. With a $200 million dollar
budget all that and more can be arranged. The finale where the huge wave
strikes not to mention those sweeping camera takes as it builds up, are quite
impressive.
What lacks is a strong narrative.
At least Aronofsky had a different take on the Noah story, here the screenplay
neither pushes the envelope nor sticks to the traditional Cecil B. DeMille’s
Ten Commandments kind of narrative. In the end we see Moses as an old man but
he looks tad younger than he would at 120 years of age.
On the whole, Exodus is a
watchable film for its scale and visual grandeur in spite of the 3D which
doesn’t add any value.
Published in The Navhind Times on 7th Dec 2014
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