Review of Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) by Nicholasbert — 28 Mar 2015

140 million dollars of budget can give you the cheapest CGI you can imagine, along with the faker gold you've ever seen on the silver screen. 140 million dollars can convince Christian Bale, one of the best and most committed actors of his generation, to take on a lead role he obviously didn't respect enough to give it the proper preparation. 140 million dollars can give you Gladiator's plot coated in Bible. What 140 million dollars can't give you is a good film.

Literally the only things to be saved from movie hell here are Christian Bale's performance (which is still his worse) and Joel Edgerton's make-up artist. The rest, I don't even know where to begin to complain. Let me try: every single thing that was computer rendered looks fake, especially in the shots of the Egyptian city; the dialogues were laughable and throughout the movie, despite it being that long, you feel like there needs to be an hour more of character development to be comprehensible; the beginning is almost word for word the premise for Gladiator, also by Ridley Scott; the plagues (perhaps the most visually would-be entriguing part) are squeezed into ten minutes; did I mention the gold looks fake?

I won't comment on the animosity some people have in regards of the changing of some parts of the "original" story, because that's what happens in every film with the source material. Historically, though, the movie isn't coherent: the action here is supposed to take place around 3000 b.C., at least according to the Bible studies, but Ramses the Great lived nearly 2000 years after that. It may seem like a small mistake, but that's like mistaking George Clinton with Marcus Aurelius.

Too much action, too much blubbery dialogues, too much fake gold. Too much money, too much hype, too much dreadlock, too much deus-ex-machina (haha), too much eyelash, too much facial inexpression, too much of everything which sums up in a terrible concoction that tastes of nothing.