Dec 07, 2014 05:24 PM
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(Updated Dec 14, 2014 02:23 PM)
Exodus Gods& Kings might be one of the worse movies to have had one of the best movie trailers of the season. And I mean that as a caveat not a compliment. Well, a compliment perhaps to the editing team but not for the film-makers.
For how awful can Ridley Scott's revisionist tale of Moses freeing Egypt's Hebrew's can be? The answer is god-awful.
Its unimaginable how the director of the caliber of Ridley Scott(Gladiator, Alien, Prometheus) could make an unabashedly silly biblical epic like this one. Make no mistakes about it, its a terrific piece of filmmaking from the master once again but not so quite terrific piece of story telling.
Even though he was never a master at building character arc, there was a poignant emotional resonance to Gladiator's central characters that made our hearts pound.
Perhaps what this biopic is missing is just exactly that. It fails to make you root for the characters, even the half baked ones like its paper thin protagonist Moses, the demented prince of Egypt played by Christian Bale.
Even if you overlook the ethnically miscasted Joel Edgerton, how on earth could one excuse Scott for getting it all politically incorrect? As in white actors playing Egyptian Gods?
As the sole saving grace there's a quasi-logical reasoning of how the Nile is turned to blood, and the overwhelming outburst of locusts and frogs are the sporadic bits you will likely enjoy.
Just in case you're wondering what the movie is about, well its length is exactly equivalent to the length of a tweet review - Moses, the defiant prince of Egypt helps to liberate 6, 00, 000 hebrew slaves from Egypt, from the evil emperor Ramses and, yes, the infinite unleashing of terrifying plagues from the gods of egypt.
The central conflict of the movie with regards to whom Moses is and how he gets expelled from the land, has shades of Gladiator written all over it but even then Scott couldn't capitalize on it and nor could he built upon the promising premise.
And well yeah you can all watch Christian Bale wear bodey-tight suit and growl but haven't you seen all that before in a better way?(TDK, TDKR)? To give credits where due Scott have extracted a terrific performance from his lead star.
To make things even, he pays homage to his brother the late Tony Scott by dedicating the film to him. In other words - his worse cardinal sin.
