Review of Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) by Harry W — 26 Apr 2015

Though not a biblical person, with Exodus: Gods and Kings boasting a stellar cast and Ridley Scott as director, it sounded like quite the experience.

I expected that Exodus: Gods and Kings would be both a slow film and a long film, but I did not expect it to be so damned empty. With the promotional material emphasizing the spectacle of the film, I had in mind that the film would take that approach a bit more. Instead, it gets lost trying to be a meaningful examination of the journey taken by thin characters. Exodus: Gods and Kings takes no time before it throws characters into battle without even taking the appropriately necessary amount of time to establish context, leaving viewers to decipher what is going on based on their biblical knowledge. As an atheist, all know is what films tell me and this film tells me nothing about why there is a war going on. After it happened in Exodus: Gods and Kings, I just found that I really didn't care enough to find out. With the one battle scene in the intro being practically the highlight of the entire feature, it's all downhill from there as it descends into an overly long, slow and melodramatic feature which could not have left me caring any less about the characters.

You would think that Ridley Scott's return to the epic historical/mythological drama would be a good one after his success with the Academy Award winning Gladiator in 2000. Instead, his inconsistent success in the following years have led to this 150 minute waste of $140 million. All I get from Exodus: Gods and Kings is the idea that Ridley Scott is well past his prime, because even the visuals in this feature fail to amaze. The scenery is effective enough and the production design, costumes and props all help to reinforce the nature of the setting and the large scale cinematography really does impressively emphasize a lot of this, but it can't help but feel artificial. Even the visual effects of the film cannot save the feature from feeling overblown and fake. Perhaps the visual nature of the film could have been better if the story actually had something to say, but there was just nothing I got from the tale. The tale of Moses was told better in parodies on Family Guy and The Simpsons than Exodus: Gods and Kings because those parodies reached the expectations of viewers, while this $140 million feature provides us with too many characters who are all too thin and no sense of epic focus. To be an epic film, Exodus: Gods and Kings would have to tell the full story of multiple characters and function as a visual spectacle. But the narrative gets so caught up in an excess of dull story details about the life of Moses that all it does is drag on. Moses is not an interesting person in Exodus: Gods and Kings because the film has no sense of characterisation about him, giving us no depth about his life or any reason why we should be interested in his story. Moses doesn't develop from the people he meets, he just remains the same monotonous medieval Bruce Wayne the entire time without a script which gives him anywhere to go. This severely limits Christian Bale in the role and the roles of the other actors, but more notably it just fails to strike a chord with the viewers. Sitting through Moses' uninspiring and emotionally distant life story for two and a half hours is not a valid form of entertainment, especially when all the promotion suggests it to be a spectacle. It suffers largely the same fate as Darren Aronofsky's Noah, though even worse because at least Noah had more characters to it who felt worth something. I guess I felt like Exodus: Gods and Kings ended where it started with only a few brief scenes which showed off promise, predominantly through exploration of technical aspects of the production because the narrative is really nothing to compliment.

Christian Bale is left stranded in a one-dimensional role by Exodus: Gods and Kings and thus is severely limited in what he can achieve. But for better or for worse, his effort is decent. Christian Bale effectively captures a sense of wisdom in his lead role as Moses, but at the same time he has the determined physicality of a warrior whenever the story demands that he grasp a weapon. He delivers his lines with an intricate and restrained nature which suggests he really thinks about what he has to say without blurting it out. Christian Bale makes a decent lead.

Joel Edgerton was ok. His leading role is one with a lot of potential, and frankly underneath that makeup he delivers a performance which captures the intense and determined nature of the character. But the problem is that he is underutilised. The character should be a lot more relevant than he is, and considering that the realism of the role is limited by the fact that Joel Edgerton is Caucasian and has moments of his Australian accent slipping out, Ridley Scott should have found a strong way to work with the character on a level beyond visual. That is not what happens, but Joel Edgerton does his part and it's decent.

But Aaron Paul failed to suffice. Aaron Paul's presence in Exodus: Gods and Kings is one of the main reasons I wanted to see the film, but I found that most of the time he just blended in to the background. I hardly blame him but rather the character he was forcibly given because his dramatic nature in the film showed him embracing the mystical universe around him with a commanding line delivery, rendering his effort a film performance which is a large step up from his lacklustre effort in Need for Speed. This time around, I wasn't annoyed that Aaron Paul never said b*tch, I just wish that Ridley Scott would actually do something with the actor so that he could finally get the big post-Breaking Bad role that he so clearly deserves.

Ben Kingsley is also a genial presence.

So Exodus: Gods and Kings has a decent cast and some decent visual moments, but nothing else is decent in this overlong, slow and empty tale which disguises its lacklustre and dull narrative as a spectacle in promotion.