Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) Review

Exodus: Gods and Kings is directed by Ridley Scott, stars Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, Ben Kingsley, Aaron Paul, and is a bible bore.

Christian Bale stars as Moses, a man who wants to free the slaves of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses, played by Joel Edgerton but has some difficulties on the way. The trailer of this film had sold it as being an action film, with Christian Bale and Joel Edgerton going against each other but sadly this is not what you get. Going into the film I already knew that the trailers falsified what the film was going to be like but that does not stop me from feeling cheated because a bit of me still believed that we would get a great ending battle sequence for all the waiting however I, like many audiences was left disappointed when walking out. I have heard about the Moses story and not read it, so I knew that in the bible there was no epic battle sequence but when a trailer sells a movie as a tense action (and when I say action I mean a few battle sequences) and the film does not deliver, it is disappointing. Ridley Scott directed Gladiator a beautiful crafted film with great fight scenes and with the first 20 to 25 minutes, I thought this was the direction they were going because the film felt like Gladiator, with Moses being favoured by Ramses father and wanting Moses to take over the reign, but that feeling died quickly. This was not the only problem.

I did not care for the characters, the reason for this was the characters did not get their time for development. It was all skipped for the more important scenes. Moses should have been a person to root for as he’s the underdog going against the mean pharaoh nevertheless I couldn't care if he failed or not as he did not get time for me to give a damn. When films skip character development what normally happens is the other important scenes do not become important because there is no one to support. How can I support Moses if I don’t know him? What happened in the film was all the important scenes was shown and when looking back at the film it does feel as if Ridley Scott was forced to cut out the character development so that more of the exciting things can be shown but without the development the exciting scenes where not exciting. Ridley Scott had even said that the film was originally 4 hours long which is a problem with stories from the bible being adapted to the big screen, there’s too much going on.

Christian Bale’s acting was fine, there was nothing special, I probably will forget about the performance very soon. There were some moments where his accent changes, this happened in some scenes. Joel Edgerton did well, had some good moments, but again a performance that will be forgotten soon. Aaron Paul was in the film because of Breaking Bad – do not get me wrong he was outstanding in Breaking Bad but in this film he was there and that’s it. Ben Kingsley was misused, he should have had a bigger role, he’s an actor that can lift a scene but he really didn’t do much. Sigourney Weaver another actress that if replaced would make no difference to the film. Overall the acting was all forgettable.

Exodus: Gods and Kings is a film that will be forgotten as it is a bore and does not excite. I also watched it in 3D on a standard cinema, which did not do anything for the film. The acting was average and characters were under developed. Exodus: Gods and Kings deserves a 6/10