Review of Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) by Epoc — 12 Dec 2014

Unlike many, I actually thought this movie was decent. At the time of this review the user review section was just littered with 1's and 2's, resulting in an incredibly low user score of 1.9! That's lower than the Star Wars prequels! Yeah that's messed up, and it's all probably butt hurt Ridley Scott fan boys raging because of Prometheus.

The first half of this film, for me was the best. We have these two very strong brother characters; Moses played by Christian Bale and Ramses played by Joel Edgerson. The brilliant aspect is that the two clearly have conflicting ideologies, yet still love and respect each other.

It adds this additional tension to every scene the two share, as your constantly wondering if an argument will erupt, but you don't that to happen because the movie does such a good job of establishing their friendship.

Helping this are great performances from both, fleshing them out and making them more believable. This especially the case for Moses, which is the best aspect of this film. He's this really good, wise man who you can really root for, yet isn't some paragon of virtue that will always do the right thing.

For example, initially Moses doesn't want to unleash the plagues on Egypt, as he thinks he will take more lives than he will save, which is what any normal person would think. In addition to this, Ramses is also extremely believable.

Even though he seems incredibly bratty and whiny, but by the end you can relate to him. He's a good person, but is fed up of things not being perfect for him, something we've all felt at some point. Despite this, the over all narrative is incredibly generic, and does absolutely nothing to make this classic tale original, and is full of under devolved and cliche characters (apart from Ramses and Moses).

Ramses father, for example, is just a huge douche bag with no real explanation of why he's like this. Also we never connect to the people Moses is trying to save, making us care more about Moses safety more than him saving everyone else.

But the most disappointing part of this movie comes when it reaches the half way mark. When your expecting all that tension to just come out in a beautifully done peace of emotional drama, it decides to rush through it.

Basically, it comes down to, Ramses father banishes Moses, he dies, Ramses is now in charge and is douche. Why? We don't know! It just skips on and suddenly he's his dad! I was expecting a scene where the two argue and we see their friendship being torn apart through dialogue.

Now the third act could have saved the movie. As mentioned before, Moses's dilemma is extremely compelling and is so interesting. Because of this though, it kind of makes God look like the villain here.

He's brashly making this decision to potentially wipe out thousands and isn't even taking into account that he might wipe out his own people in process. But the plagues! Oh my god the plagues look amazing! One of the best parts of this film is just the grand scale of Egypt and how cool it looks.

And when the plagues come down it just destroys everything and it looks awesome! Their vile and disgusting, yet look really realistic. If this where to happen in real life, this is how it would look. It mixes everything to amazing CGI to excellent audio to make an immersive experience.

Unfortunately, the ending is a huge let down. The parting of the Red Sea is no where near as awe inspiring or grand as it should. Worsening the taste of this last morsel is the fact that the CGI takes a big turn around.

The sea looked like a darker version of the Elder Scrolls Oblivion water! Did they run out of budget? And that's it! No ending, no finally face of between the two brothers, just done. In the end Exodus ends up being a let down, yet still a great emotional drama (at least in the first half) and an entertaining watch.