EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS
Starring Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton
Directed by Ridley Scott
While Ridley Scott is rarely credited with caring much about thematics, the subject of freedom has arisen throughout his body of work. Be it the fugitive replicants in Blade Runner, the outlaws in Thelma & Louise, or the subjugated Gladiator, his characters have frequently spilled considerable blood to attain their liberty. Consequently, it's not particularly surprising that his Biblical epic should boast a budget for hemoglobin rivalled only by the considerable funds devoted to bronzer.
We're introduced to Moses (Christian Bale, brooding and scraggly) and Rhamses (Joel Edgerton, preening and eyelined) on a 1,300 BCE battlefield with the former forging ahead with zero regard for self-preservation and the latter promptly retreating after proving himself hapless. Well-documented Old Testament events soon conspire to set these men against one another, with Moses springing the slaves and setting course for the Red Sea with the sanctimonious Rhamses, who's graduated to pharaoh, in hot pursuit.
For a man so taken with characters who are willing to put everything on the line, Scott has proven risk adverse himself, shackled by a technical perfectionism that quashes any sense of wonder. Given this, it's no surprise that while his plague of frogs is completely convincing, it possesses none of the impact of the shower of amphibians that Paul Thomas Anderson rained down in Magnolia. Likewise, while Exodus offers endless spectacle, it never manufactures anything as inventive as the Genesis time lapse sequence in Darren Aronofsky’s Noah. Ultimately, Scott's chaos is far too controlled, making for some particularly po-faced silliness.
But, if nothing else, he instills the sense that you've endured a slog every bit as arduous as Moses'.
