Exodus: Gods and Kings is a dreary retelling of the Exodus bible story that only picks up when we start getting our Plagues of Egypt on. This movie has a pacing and story building problem. It opens with the barest handful of character development before throwing us head-first into full-on Return of the King Epic Battle Mode where we barely know the sides and care even less who wins. I guess we’re supposed to just automatically know and care for the Egyptians because, you know, we read the book. From there, it just hops and skips around through various plot points and builds nothing interesting in a very plodding way that still feels like it’s skipping and jumping through time.

Much has been said about casting Christian Bale as Moses and there’s a reasonable argument people can have about it… but that’s almost beside the point because Bale puts nothing into his role. Anyone could be playing the character – he’s boring, his dialog is boring, his relationship with Rameses is barely there, and anyone could have played the guy. That relationship with Rameses should have been key – to watch their brotherhood full apart, two brothers clashing, etc. Nope… there’s barely a skin of relationship between them.

Only about half-way into the movie where we starting getting Biblical Plagues does the movie start to pick up a little bit. Fair warning though, this is a PG-13 movie with dozens of people eaten alive (with tons of blood) by crocodiles… and it kind of gets worse with plague pustules, vomiting horses and cattle, etc. I thought it should have an R rating. But at least this stuff was interesting and the final death of the first borns was actually pretty moving. Though it was moving, in part, in an interesting way since it didn’t make God out to be the nicest guy (arguably true of the old testament god) which is emblematic of a big problem with the movie.

The movie is scared of its own source material and doesn’t have the courage of its convictions. What are those convictions? I don’t know. Half the movie feels like it’s a retelling of the bible and the other half seems like it wants you to think Moses is crazy and all the Plagues of Egypt were natural. It can’t decide if it’s pandering to the religious or pandering to the more secular people in the audience.

The biggest tell that the movie is confusing is literally within the first minute where it tells us this movie takes place in 1200 BCE… not BC (Before Christ), but BCE (Before the Common Era)… which is perplexing for a bible-based story. I guess you could argue they are pandering to Jews who wouldn’t necessarily date years based on BC and AD… but then maybe it should have used the hebrew dating scheme and not this more secular dating system.

On top of that, it feels entirely too modern – the dialog feels too current and Moses and some others have belief systems that feel more like they are pandering to a not-particularly-religious modern day audience. Moses, for instance, doesn’t believe in any gods or mysticism such as reading entrails… I suspect people of the time would have all believed in this stuff but the film makers knew we would call all that nonsense. It felt like it was pandering much in the same way Perseus in the Clash of the Titans remake went around saying the Greek gods are full of shit and man should be in charge of himself (a thought I doubt any ancient Greek would think… but you and I would so they have to make the hero modern or else we won’t like him, I guess).

Anyhow, guess who else is in this movie? Sigourney Weaver who has about two lines and John Turturo as the Pharaoh (pre Rameses). John Turturo has a number of lines and always feels like he’s wandered into a far less drearily serious movie. It was some major miscasting.

To it’s credit, the movie looks great, especially if you like dusty desert-y brown. The sweeping visuals of the Egyptian cities and slaves at work and later the actual Exodus are all pretty great. I can’t argue they didn’t put the money on screen.

Anyhow, this is a mediocre movie – not without some enjoyment in the second half (of 2 1/2 hours). It could have starred anyone and it honestly could have been directed by anyone… I didn’t see much passion or even interest in this material from Ridley Scott (which I could say about almost everything he’s made over the past 10 years).

Score: 66