Exodus: Gods and Kings

Released: December 2014

Director: Ridley Scott

Run Time: 150 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Cast:
Christian Bale: Moses
Joel Edgerton: Ramses
John Turturro: Seti
Aaron Paul: Joshua
Sigourney Weaver: Tuya
Ben Kingsley: Nun

Say what you will about the Bible.  I certainly have MY opinions about the book, but the one thing that really can’t be denied about the Bible is that it has some wild and crazy stories.  The Old Testament in particular is LOADED with epic stories of power, betrayal and faith.  But the other thing you should know is that the God of the Old Testament is NOT a nice guy.  He’s hard and at times very cruel.  This is very evident in stories such as Noah’s Ark, Abraham and the most famous of the Bible’s stories: The story of Moses and the Ten Commandments.  This is all part of the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament.  There have been MANY movies based on Biblical stories.  Movies like The King of Kings and The Passion of the Christ are among the many that are about Jesus Christ.  But there have been numerous films about other stories in the book.  The most of which is The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston stands out among the pack as a 3-hour epic.  A few decades later, Ridley Scott decides to take his own stab at the story of Moses: Exodus: Gods and Kings.

Exodus begins with Moses and his closest friend Ramses are in counsel with Pharaoh Seti, Ramses’ father.  They are deciding how best to handle a potential incursion from an army of Hittites that hovering near the border of Egypt.  So, they decide to catch the Hittites off guard and in the ensuing battle, Moses ends up saving Ramses’ life.  Later, Seti demands that Ramses take an interest in the city, especially with the Hebrew slaves.  Moses ends up going to inspect the quarry instead of Ramses and learns of his true origins as a Hebrew himself.  When Ramses learns of this, Moses is banished from the city of Memphis and wanders the desert until he comes to a remote village where he falls in love a local woman.  Some time later, he chases some sheep up a nearby mountain when he encounters a strange child near a burning bush.  Moses is told to seek out the Hebrew slaves to understand what’s happening to them.  When he discovers that they are being cruelly mistreated, even more so than when Seti was in power,  Moses becomes determined to free the people from the tyranny of Ramses.  Anybody who has read the Book of Exodus will know how this story goes, so spoilers shouldn’t really be a concern to anybody.

Moses is arguable one of the most important figures, if not the MOST important figure in The Old Testament.  He is a symbol of liberation and bringer of law to the Israeli people.  This figure is important not just in Judaism, but also Christianity and Islam.  Moses liberated the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt, led them out of Egypt and across the Red Sea, and gave the world the Ten Commandments.  While the story of Moses had the character brought up in the royal Egyptian family, the actual story never portrayed him as a military commander.  That’s an angle that Ridley Scott and company came up with, and for Exodus, it works.  One of the opening sequences of the film actually features a rather large battle between the Egyptians and the Hittites.  I will definitely say this for Ridley Scott, the man knows how to stage a large scale battle.  Don’t believe me?  Check out Gladiator.  Yeah, this movie is epic in every sense of the word.  It would have to be.  The story of Moses is grand and epic in and of itself.  For a movie that is as epic as this, you don’t really see a whole lot of warfare.  It isn’t that kind of movie.  Yeah, we do get a large battle at the beginning of the movie, but the epicness(is that a word?)is the journey that Moses takes to liberate his people.  Now, when you’re making a movie about Moses, there are certain expectations that must be met.  A little backstory on how Moses grew up?  Check.  The 10 Plagues of Egypt?  Check.  Parting the Red Sea?  Check.  The plagues are one of the more interesting aspects of the film, because they are well done.  The sequence with the alligators is surprisingly graphic and disturbing.  The locusts and the frogs?  Not bad.  But the most disturbing plague out of all of them was the death of the firstborns.  This plague affected EVERYONE who’s dwelling wasn’t marked with lamb’s blood.  So, all the Egyptians’ firstborn children, including the pharaoh, were killed.  That’s brutal.  It’s not graphic, but it’s rather unsettling that God would do something this horrendous.  But if you also read The Old Testament, God would destroy most of mankind in a Great Flood.  There’s no question about it:  God was a bit of a jerk.  Speaking of floods, the parting of the Red Sea is one of the most spectacular sequences in the film.  Unlike The Ten Commandments, where the sea would literally split in two right down the middle, the sequence in Exodus has more of a tsunami-like feel to it.  But it’s not just that, you’ve also got tornadoes and big armies involved.  It’s truly a sight to behold.

When Noah was released, people were not particularly happy that it was basically turned into an action film.  Considering how much of the character was revealed in Genesis, which wasn’t a whole lot, liberties were taken to give the film its dramatic flourish.  The same kind of thing was employed here, just not to such a degree.  Christian Bale is fantastic as Moses.  He brings the character a level of humility when he’s banished from Memphis.  Like-wise, Joel Edgerton is great as Ramses.  He doesn’t come across as completely evil, but he’s very selfish and unwilling to do the right thing which is free the slaves.  The acting in the film is pretty strong.  One of my big issues is that Sigourney Weaver doesn’t get a whole lot of screen time, which is a shame, because she is positively elegant in the role.  Ben Kingsley gets more a role, but still seems not nearly as important as he could be.  There are also points where the film seems to drag a little bit.  It seems to run a little too long.  Visually, though, Exodus: Gods and Kings is an extraordinarily spectacular experience that needs to be seen at least once.  I know people are up in arms about the movie’s historical accuracy, but I have to ask this?  When has any movie based on a biblical story been historically accurate?  There’s no evidence proving that Moses even existed.  The Bible doesn’t even mention the pharaoh’s name.  The film has Moses talking to God and even having him write The Ten Commandments on two stone tablets.  What the film doesn’t show is that some of the Israelites ended up worshipping a golden calf created by Aaron.  As a result, Moses smashed the initial stone tablets and ordered the unfaithful to be massacred.  So, yeah, Exodus wasn’t 100 percent accurate.  Overall, though, I rather enjoyed the film.  It’s visually interesting with great sets and amazing visual effects.  It’s a great story with interesting themes and interesting characters.  This one gets a 9/10.

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