Movie Review: Exodus: Gods and Kings

Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014): The defiant leader Moses rises up against the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses, setting 600,000 slaves on a monumental journey of escape from Egypt and its terrifying cycle of deadly plagues.

I don't usually pick pictures for a specific purpose, but I did here. Take a look at the picture I have at the top of this review. This picture symbolizes everything wrong with this movie. From left to right you have Joel Edgerton, the legendary Sigourney Weaver, John Turturro, (many may remember him as being an occasional bright spot in the Transformers series) and of course, Christian Bale. Additionally, Aaron Paul (of Breaking Bad) and the also-legendary Ben Kingsley also make appearances to round out a superstar cast comparable to the likes of American Hustle last year. And yet, unlike American Hustle, none of these roles actually matter. Hell, I could play every single one of these roles and no one would notice. Ok maybe with the exception of Joel Edgerton. He was decent. But I don't know if I have ever seen such a lack of effort or caring from anyone else in this film. Every single performance could've been from my neighbor Joe the Plumber as much as it was from a superstar actor. This is the result of a horrible screenplay, as well as what us the viewers need to start catching on to: Ridley Scott is a terrible director. Hollywood has caught on to this. Now we need to as well.

Ok so you already know my thoughts on the acting. It's terrible with the exception of Joel Edgerton, who is screen-hogging like nothing else in his performance which is the only reason it stands out here. Which is kind of funny when you think about it: the only performance in a movie containing the cast I just brought up is someone who is trying to make a name for themselves. Lol. But the story. The story is TERRIBLE. Who could've thought that Ridley Scott and company (aka Adam Cooper) could screw up such a common and well-known story. See here's its problem. It tries to make itself controversial with some of the stances it takes on God, Moses, and the Jewish religion, but in the process it alienates these groups because the feeling you get with these decisions is anger and frustration. Scott and co. did this in an attempt to help make this movie appeal to a wide-spread audience but forgot a key fact about this demographic: the primary group of people going and seeing this movie are those that would be made upset by the stances it takes. Forgot about that didn't you Mr. Scott? The one thing the story did that was somewhat creative was how it interpreted the vision of God by Moses. I obviously won't tell you how the movie does this because it is a spoiler for the (unfortunately) best part of the movie, however it was the one time that the movie got my attention pretty much at any point past the random big action scene that literally had nothing to do with anything in the first few minutes. Seriously...why was that action scene there? Usually when a movie uses an action scene to get our attention in the first few minutes it connects to the story somehow, but not here! Just ACTION. Because moviegoers love watching death take place in front of them! YA. AND EXPLOSIONS! Let's get them into 1500 BC somehow! YEAAAAAAAHHHHHH.

Almost every aspect of this movie fails. At a whooping 150 minutes, the movie is waaaaaay too long. Those 150 minutes felt like 250 minutes to me. I had the unfortunate "pleasure" of seeing this movie in 3D. The 3D was so bad I thought it was a post-converted 3D movie, but upon further investigation I discovered, and it shocks me to say this, but this movie was SHOT IN 3D. This has got to be the worst real 3D I have ever seen. Additionally the CGI is painfully average. Seeing the plagues unfold in front of you is obviously supposed to be the calling card of this movie, but it was sadly underwhelming because the cinematography was, well, horrible. We could not gain an appreciation of the plagues because we were given very few wide-shots of the damn plagues! The ones we got were pretty cool, but it should've been all wide-shots. Ridley Scott, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? ADAM SANDLER COULD DO YOUR JOB ALMOST AS WELL AS YOU. Boy I am really picking on Adam Sandler huh? Well it's ok. He takes criticism better than Kim Jung-Un does at least. HEYOH insensitive jokes everywhere!

Ok to bring things back on track, this movie sucks. There were periods of semi-decent things-oh, can we talk about the wall of water real quick? It's funny to me because I was looking forward to the wall of water literally the entire movie. Then I saw it, then I thought of the wall of water in Interstellar, and I became sad. Interstellar's wall of water > Exodus' wall of water. Anyway there were period of semi-decent moments surrounded by gross incompetency on the point of the director and his crew. Combine that with the fact that everyone is phoning in their roles in this, including Christian Bale who is famous for completely immersing himself in his roles, and you have a very bad movie. Don't go see it. Go see The Prince of Egypt again or 1956's The Ten Commandments. Or just read the story in the bible. Any one of those options are better than watching this train wreck of a movie.

The Critique: Ridley Scott sucks, guys. Directing three good movies (Blade Runner, Alien, and Gladiator) does not give you a free pass on the great multitude of crappy movies you've released over the years. Please....just stop.

The Recommendation: Grumpy cat says NO.

Rewatchability: Lol nope

The Verdict: 3/10 Bad




Photo Credits
http://www.cinemablend.com/images/news_img/66818/Exodus_66818.jpg (Exodus picture)
http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140501181347/creepypasta/images/f/f6/Grumpy_Cat.jpg (grumpy cat)
http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-06/4/11/enhanced/webdr08/anigif_enhanced-buzz-16223-1401896698-17.gif (cat explosion)
http://i.imgur.com/SpDpM5n.gif (bee explosion)
http://www.quickmeme.com/img/66/669a7a9b679541a39df5f437b5c58c55a949483662376a9fdaa04244f3be7cec.jpg (Kim Jung-Un)