Exodus review: Christian Bale plays Moses in Ridley Scott's copycat, drab Biblical tale

Ridley Scott has been once of the most influential motion picture directors of all time, but unfortunately in the last ten years, Scott has become something we’re increasingly growing weary of: the director of singularly disappointing motion pictures. Exodus: Gods and Kings has most of the same problems with which his last few features have been afflicted. The films look gorgeous, promise something interesting and end up being derivative, melodramatic and severely underwhelming. The film stars an ironically named Christian Bale as Moses, Joel Edgerton as Rhamses, John Turturro as Seti and Sigourney Weaver as Tuya (Rhamses’s parents). With a cast like that, Scott at the helm and the legendary Steve Zaillian as one of the writers as well as a budget of $150 million, what could possibly go wrong? The answer: a lot. [caption id=“attachment_1834487” align=“alignleft” width=“380” class=" “] Image courtesy: Facebook[/caption] The first of many problems is a massive one: we’ve already seen this movie twice before – first in live action format (The Ten Commandments) and also in animation format (The Prince of Egypt). There is nothing new that Scott and his team bring to table. The only difference is that Exodus is significantly worse than its predecessors. The story is of course, the same, note for note. The adopted Moses grows up in the palace of the Egyptian Pharaoh Seti, fighting alongside Rhamses as his military advisor and enslaving Israelites (also called Hebrews), unaware that he himself is one of them. Rhamses gets to hear of a prophecy, of a Hebrew overthrowing the Egyptian empire and banishes Moses to the desert. Moses then covertly trains Israelites to rebellion and with god’s help, he sets his people free. On one hand, Scott tries to pander to people who haven’t seen the previous retellings of Moses’s story, but he doesn’t say or do anything new. At other times, he just rips off the first two movies and simply replaces the imagery with different CGI. This brings us to another another source of frustration in the film: the visuals. In the previous movies, every fantastical set piece was an eye-popping spectacle. In Exodus, every plot point passes by like a mundane checkpoint rather than a fantastic motion picture event. Need to show a plague of locusts? Bring out the CGI. A Nile of flowing blood instead of water? Press a button and hey presto! The water turns red. The final plague that Moses’s god sends upon the Egyptians – the death of the firstborn of every household – is supposed to be scary, but at the sight of the invisible wind that blows out flickering lamps, all you’ll find yourself doing is twiddling your thumbs and waiting for the overlong scene to get over. The unforgettable image in Moses’s story is the parting of the Red Sea, and it’s unbelievable how limp and anticlimactic the sequence is in Exodus. The sea doesn’t part, it just drains, sort of. It actually looks like Scott ran out of money to create the sequence. Perhaps his intentions were to make it more realistic, but that makes no sense since he doesn’t bother to authenticate the other miracles. It’s just another example of Scott being unsure of what to do with an already overused story. The acting doesn’t wow you either. This is the laziest ever screen role from Bale. Unlike in Noah where Russell Crowe’s fiery acting anchored a mediocre movie, Bale lumbers around, looking bored. Joel Edgerton is passable (mostly because of his makeup). Weaver, Aaron Paul and Mendelsohn are wasted in bit parts. In Noah, Darren Aronofsky attempted to mix things up by presenting the protagonist as an antagonist. Scott doesn’t bother with anything of the sort. He seems content to follow in the footsteps of what religion force feeds its congregation. If someone like Scott at this point of his life can’t take risks, then the end is pretty much nigh.