I will begin this review by stating something important to me: I am glad that movies like this find a way to get made. I liked Gladiator, of course, as everyone did, and I loved Kingdom of Heaven and think it was one of the most underrated movies of its era. I really want there to be a space for "big historical epics." I wish there were more of them, in fact! But the problem is, I also wish they were better than this.

Spoiler alert: I am not going to give this movie a great score at the end of this review. For the opening half of the movie, I was well-prepared to give it about a 6; I thought it was doing just fine, competently executed. But then the second half of the movie was plagued with a lot more nonsense that had to be thrown in to finish the story, but wasn't the interesting or good part. Up until Moses is banished from Egypt and meets his wife, I think it was doing a good job establishing characters, setting the table for their future developments, and generally placing a world around them that makes sense and creating believable stress points.

But after he returns to Egypt, so much has to happen, and so little of it actually drives the story forward, and basically none of it establishes any kind of theme. My interest waned dramatically as a result. One problem, I think, is that the movie's arc wants to set up Moses as a hero and savior of the enslaved Hebrews, but another part of the movie (and certainly Christian Bale as his performance makes evident) instead wants Moses to appear as an insane person suffering from a significant brain injury. These two don't really play well together and it results in a lot of muddle and not really any clear themes or ideas.

Speaking of Christian Bale, I don't even have to look to know that this movie surely had Controversy when it came out about the whitewashing of the cast. I don't remember even hearing about the movie back then, but obviously, it is a bit questionable to cast essentially all white actors to play the Egyptians and ancient Hebrews of the Middle East. To some degree I am sympathetic to the needs of the filmmaker; you probably do, unfortunately, need a Christian Bale to lead the film, if you want it to sell (or even be funded). But I am pretty sure you don't need the rest! Is anyone coming to see this movie because Aaron Paul is in it, or Ben Mendelsohn, or even Joel Edgerton or Sigourney Weaver? I mean no offense to the acting skills of those people, but it seems like obviously they are not, and at the very least they could have given some minority actors an opportunity in places like this. I certainly don't think the movie would have lost anything.

The other strange thing I want to cover about this movie is that of course it is based on the Bible, but Ridley Scott is very insistent on trying to figure out plausible natural explanations for the events of the Bible. In some cases, it is relatively easy; of course there could be a locust infestation. Moses could have hallucinated a burning bush due to his concussion. In some other cases, it is a bit more challenging, as with the suggestion that the sea could have pulled far enough back due to tsunami forces to allow a full crossing on foot, but if you stretch a little you can think "alright, sure." And it is perfectly fair to take this approach, and I think it is an interesting thing to do. Maybe a little tacky to have a Science Guy explain "no trust me this is science" after every one happens, but so it goes. The trouble is in THIS movie, it has one major problem he can't confront: the deaths of the Egyptian firstborn sons in the last plague, and the Passover. Instead it is just... totally supernatural. No attempt at any sort of explanation. It's fine to do this, too, in a film! But to do it in the very same movie where you are pretending to objective scientific accuracy is weird and off-putting. He even took the coward's way out with the Pharaoh's science advisor and had him killed right before this plague just to avoid trying to explain it. Alas.

Score: 4/10

IMDb: Exodus: Gods and Kings

S: Am I really supposed to believe that Moses and the Pharaoh were both hit with a colossal 200 foot tidal wave in the middle of a sea that is hundreds of miles wide (although depicted as hundreds of feet at most in the movie) and simply walk away unscathed? Safely returned each to his opposite shoreline. Ridley, please. Although I guess he can't just drown Ramesses either - I have seen him at a museum, and he had quite a successful life left ahead of him.