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‘exodus: gods and kings’: film review.

Ridley Scott's rendering of the Book of Exodus serves up most of the spectacular highlights of the biblical tale

By Stephen Farber

Stephen Farber

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2014 marks the resurgence of the Old Testament at the movies . After Darren Aronofsky turned to Genesis to unleash Noah , Ridley Scott moves forward to the Book of Exodus to revisit the story of Moses. Exodus: Gods and Kings is this century’s answer to Cecil B. DeMille ’s The Ten Commandments , but it already looks to be more controversial than that pious 1956 opus. Spectacularly filmed and intermittently well acted, though not quite as much campy fun as the DeMille version, the picture looks likely to attract a substantial audience even if some religious leaders voice protests.

Scott did a great job reviving the Roman sword-and-sandals epic when he made the Oscar-winning Gladiator . This Egyptian saga is not quite in the same league, but it confirms the director’s flair for widescreen imagery. Exodus has the added kick of 3D technology, and it has enough eye-popping set pieces to please adventure fans.

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Unlike the DeMille rendering, this one does not begin at the beginning but plunges us into the middle of the action, with Moses ( Christian Bale ) as an adult in the royal court. We eventually learn the backstory of how the Jewish child managed to find a home among the kings, but we’re introduced to him as a warrior and best friend of Ramses ( Joel Edgerton ). The first part of the movie cribs rather shamelessly from Gladiator , which began by sketching the rivalry between the emperor’s son and his favorite warrior. Here the aging Pharaoh, played by John Turturro , prefers his adopted son Moses to his own son Ramses. This tortured family drama was performed much more persuasively in Gladiator by Russell Crowe , Joaquin Phoenix  and Richard Harris . Despite an excess of mascara, Turturro is sympathetic, but he doesn’t fit all that comfortably into ancient Egypt.

An early battle scene against the Hittites, modeled very closely on the climactic battle scene between Arabs and Turks in Lawrence of Arabia , suggests that Moses is the superior warrior, which prepares for his eventual banishment once Ramses succeeds his father on the throne. But the friendship between the two soldiers is not well established in the opening scenes, so the film stumbles out of the gate. Four writers — Adam Cooper , Bill Collage , Jeffrey Caine  and Oscar winner Steven Zaillian — are credited with the screenplay, and they haven’t been able to craft an elegant narrative from the biblical text. The dialogue is often cringe-worthy, as when a surly Moses tells God, “Nice of you to come.”

Read more ‘Exodus’: How Ridley Scott Chose His 11-Year-Old Voice of God

When Moses learns his true identity, he is reluctant to play the role of savior, and he finds a comfortable home in a remote village, where he marries and has a son. But his destiny calls when he comes upon the famous burning bush and is approached by God to lead his people out of slavery.  Here is the film’s most controversial choice, for God appears to Moses as a fierce child . Although this may offend some devout viewers, it’s actually far more interesting than the booming offscreen voice that DeMille used in his version of the story. This divine child seems angry and vengeful rather than a benign Buddha figure, but one could argue that this is in keeping with the Old Testament God of wrath.

The film hits its peak in the sequence recounting the 10 plagues. The savage crocodiles were not in the Old Testament, but as they attack humans as well as fish, they turn the Nile blood red, which is at least an ingenious explanation of how the river might have turned to blood. Frogs, boils and locusts are truer to the text and are rendered in luscious visual detail.

Watch more Ridley Scott Explains Why He Made ‘Exodus: Gods and Kings’ in New Featurette

The climactic chase to the Red Sea is equally spectacular. Although The Ten Commandments won the Oscar for its visual effects, the parting of the Red Sea in DeMille’s film was laughably tacky. Scott comes up with a somewhat more credible portrayal of how the Israelites managed to cross the sea before a monumental storm drowned the Egyptians. This sequence is visually thrilling. The movie should have ended there, but Scott and the writers seem to have felt obliged to include a few of the later parts of the story, including the delivery of the Ten Commandments and a scene of an aged Moses finally arriving near the land of Canaan. But while these events are integral to the biblical story, they come off here as the worst kind of anticlimax.

Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski and production designer Arthur Max make impressive contributions, though some of the aerial shots of the Egyptian capital look a little too much like CGI-enhanced sets. Alberto Iglesias ’ score is overly bombastic.

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Don’t expect any acting nominations for the picture. Bale garbles a few too many of his lines, but he has an imposing physical presence. Edgerton is competent, but we miss the hammy exuberance of DeMille’s Ramses, Yul Brynner . Ben Mendelsohn , however, has fun with the role of the sniveling, treacherous viceroy who exposes Moses’ true heritage. Ben Kingsley adds gravitas as the elderly Jewish leader, but most of the other actors are stranded with far too little to do. Sigourney Weaver is completely wasted as Ramses’ conniving mother, and Breaking Bad ’s Aaron Paul barely registers in the underwritten role of Joshua. Maria Valverde is strikingly beautiful as Moses’ wife, Zipporah, but her role is just as skimpy as most of the others.

No movie with such a limp ending can be fully satisfying, and the beginning also falters. But the long middle section is a rousing good show.

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Cast: Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, Ben Kingsley, Sigourney Weaver, John Turturro, Ben Mendelsohn, Maria Valverde, Golshifteh Farahani, Indira Varma, Hiam Abbass Director: Ridley Scott Screenwriters: Adam Cooper, Bill Collage, Jeffrey Caine, Steven Zaillian Producers: Ridley Scott, Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping, Michael Schaeffer, Mark Huffam Director of photography: Dariusz Wolski Production designer: Arthur Max Costume designer: Janty Yates Editor: Billy Rich Music: Alberto Iglesias

Rated PG-13, 150 minutes

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Exodus: Gods and Kings

A numbing and soulless spectacle of 3-D, computer-generated imagery run amok, Ridley Scott ’s “Exodus: Gods and Kings” presents an enduring tale by pummeling us over the head with it.

The story of Moses rising up against the Pharaoh Ramses and leading hundreds of thousands of Hebrew slaves out of Egypt to freedom is one with which we’re all extremely familiar. It’s the entire point of Passover. Scott is not reinventing the wheel here. Rather, he’s invented the biggest, shiniest, noisiest wheel imaginable, then he runs over us with it rather than inviting us along for the ride.

Certainly, there’s an allure to seeing this sort of old-fashioned, biblical epic on the big screen–and indeed, within this proliferation of pixels, there is undeniable craft and heft to the massive set pieces and behemoth battles. From the costumes to the weaponry to the interiors, it’s obvious that Scott’s team took great care in considering and creating every detail. But the film as a whole (with a script credited to Adam Cooper & Bill Collage and Jeffrey Caine and Steven Zaillian ) feels overstuffed and over-glossed. Self-serious to a fault, it packs in more and more in terms of story and extravagant visuals while offering too little in terms of actual character development and engaging drama.

When he’s been at his absolute best in his lengthy career, directing films like “ Blade Runner ” and “ Alien ” and even “Thelma & Louise,” Scott has established himself as a visionary and a master of creating imagery that would go on to be iconic. “Exodus” feels oddly impersonal. It’s hard to tell what Scott’s point is here, beyond making his Academy Award-winning “ Gladiator ” look like an independent film by comparison. Earlier this year, “Gladiator” star Russell Crowe played the title character in Darren Aronofsky ’s “ Noah .” That was a biblical epic which also was massive in scope but at the same time beautiful and strange; it stayed true to its source material but found an intriguing and challenging tone. It actually evoked emotion.

In “Exodus,” the plagues are fun, briefly, and that’s about it. At least, the prospect of the plagues presents the promise of fun: “Eww, gross, a massive pile of frogs,” or: “Aww, yeah, here come the locusts.” But like so much else in the film, these potentially thrilling sequences of havoc and terror evolve into enormous swarms digitally divorced from their effect on humanity. (The boils, though–they remain. And they’re nasty.)

It certainly doesn’t help that Christian Bale plays Moses in mostly stiff and detached fashion. (But hey, at least he’s more intelligible here than he is as a grumbling and tormented Batman). Here, he’s a quietly capable leader –a general among men, and in the eyes of the Pharaoh Seti ( John Turturro ), who raised Moses as his adopted son, clearly more capable to take over the kingdom than his own biological son, the preening and egotistical Ramses ( Joel Edgerton ). Despite the thick eyeliner, the shiny, bald pate and the radiant golden wardrobe, Edgerton is never quite flamboyant enough. He could have gone over the top with the role and helped breathe some life into this picture. He seems sadly uncomfortable.

Once it’s revealed that Moses is actually, you know, Jewish, he’s cast into exile, where he forges a pleasant, new life for himself as a sheepherder with a wife and a son. Meanwhile, over the past nine years, Ramses has assumed power and essentially turned Memphis into Las Vegas: overbuilt, overpopulated and so generally overwhelmed that slaves are being burned to death just to thin the place out. (It seems entirely possible that Scott does not get the irony of constructing something that is simply too big.)

It’s at this time that Moses starts seeing visions and receiving instructions as to his true purpose: to return to his homeland and free his people. God appears to him as an impish British schoolboy, which is a rather clever idea. In retrospect, Old Testament God does seem rather capricious and destructive in ways that remind me of my overtired 5-year-old son playing with his Legos after a long day at school. But that casting represents a rare moment of innovation in a film that may as well come with a checklist at the door. Even the parting of the Red Sea–which should be a spectacular event generating legitimate excitement–suggests the draining of a massive bathtub.

Ben Kingsley appears in a woefully small role as Nun, the elderly scholar who shares the news with Moses about his true heritage, yet he can’t help but infuse his few moments with great dignity. As Joshua, who helps Moses lead the slaves out of Egypt, Aaron Paul is mostly relegated to sticking by Moses’ side, a huge waste of both his presence and his ordinarily inspired instincts. Sigourney Weaver gets even less to do as Ramses’ haughty mother, Tuya, while Hiam Abbass , as Moses’ mother, Bithia, has only a handful of lines of dialogue.

So why is this blockbuster different from all other blockbusters? It’s not. There’s just more of it. And less.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series “Ebert Presents At the Movies” opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• John Turturro as Seti
• Indira Varma as Miriam
• Joel Edgerton as Rhamses
• María Valverde as Séfora
• Sigourney Weaver as Tuya
• Aaron Paul as Joshua
• Ben Mendelsohn as Hegep
• Golshifteh Farahani as Nefertari
• Christian Bale as Moses
• Ben Kingsley as Nun
• Adam Cooper
• Bill Collage
• Steven Zaillian

Director of Photography

• Dariusz Wolski
• Ridley Scott

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Exodus: Gods and Kings

The defiant leader Moses rises up against Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II, setting six hundred thousand slaves on a monumental journey of escape from Egypt and its terrifying cycle of deadly plag... Read all The defiant leader Moses rises up against Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II, setting six hundred thousand slaves on a monumental journey of escape from Egypt and its terrifying cycle of deadly plagues. The defiant leader Moses rises up against Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II, setting six hundred thousand slaves on a monumental journey of escape from Egypt and its terrifying cycle of deadly plagues.

• Ridley Scott
• Adam Cooper
• Bill Collage
• Jeffrey Caine
• Christian Bale
• Joel Edgerton
• Ben Kingsley
• 820 User reviews
• 339 Critic reviews
• 52 Metascore
• 6 nominations

Top cast 81

• Viceroy Hegep

• High Priestess

• Ramses' Grand Vizier

• Commander Khyan

• Ramses' Scribe
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia To prepare for his role as Moses, Christian Bale read the first five books of the Bible, the Quran, as well as Louis Ginzberg's classic, "Legends of the Jews," and Jonathan Kirsch's "Moses, A Life."
• Goofs In several scenes, Ramses is depicted in bed with many luxurious pillows. Ancient Egyptians did not use pillows, instead they used elaborately carved wooden headrests to sleep on.

[from trailer]

Rhamses : You say that you didn't... cause all this. You say this is not your fault. So let's just see who's more effective at killing: You or me.

• Crazy credits For my brother, Tony Scott
• Connections Featured in The Comfort Zone: Christian Bale's "Exodus" Movie (2014)

User reviews 820

A better movie for vfx geek like me.

• Reno-Rangan
• Apr 2, 2015
• December 12, 2014 (United States)
• United Kingdom
• United States
• Official Facebook
• Official site
• Fuerteventura, Canary Islands, Spain (Exodus)
• Chernin Entertainment
• Scott Free Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $140,000,000 (estimated)
• $65,014,513
• $24,115,934
• Dec 14, 2014
• $268,175,631

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 30 minutes
• Dolby Atmos
• Dolby Surround 7.1
• Dolby Digital

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Film Review: ‘Exodus: Gods and Kings’

An improbably Anglo-led cast aside, Ridley Scott's Old Testament epic is a genuinely imposing spectacle.

By Justin Chang

Justin Chang

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“It’s not even that good a story,” Moses grumbles early on in Ridley Scott ‘s “ Exodus: Gods and Kings ,” shortly after learning of the mysterious events that transformed a lowly Hebrew slave into a full-blown prince of Egypt. It’s a sly, knowing wink from a filmmaker who clearly has a terrific tale on his hands, yet faces a bit of a challenge in selling it to a more cynical, less easily razzle-dazzled audience than those that greeted the biblical epics of yesteryear. What’s remarkable about Scott’s genuinely imposing Old Testament psychodrama is the degree to which he succeeds in conjuring a mighty and momentous spectacle — one that, for sheer astonishment, rivals any of the lavish visions of ancient times the director has given us — while turning his own skepticism into a potent source of moral and dramatic conflict.

If this estimable account of how God delivered His people out of Egypt feels like a movie for a decidedly secular age, its searching, non-doctrinaire approach arguably gets closer to penetrating the mystery of faith than a more fawning approach might have managed. Like “Noah,” the year’s other nonconformist Judeo-Christian blockbuster, this is an uncommonly intelligent, respectful but far-from-reverent outsider’s take on Scripture, although “Exodus” is less madly eccentric and more firmly grounded in the sword-and-sandal tradition than Darren Aronofsky’s film, and will almost certainly prove less polarizing among believers. Even with a hefty $140 million pricetag and a two-and-a-half-hour running time to overcome, Fox’s year-end release (opening Dec. 12 Stateside) should ride 3D ticket premiums and general curiosity to muscular returns worldwide, landing closer to “Gladiator” than “Kingdom of Heaven” territory in terms of audience satisfaction and commercial payoff.

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If there’s a controversial talking point here, it’s that Scott’s film continues the dubious tradition of casting white actors in an English-language picture set at the meeting point of Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Plenty of ink has already been spilled over the injustice of yet another major historical drama ceding the big roles to Hollywood royalty while relegating blacks, Arabs and other actors of color to the background: In addition to Christian Bale ‘s star turn as Moses, “Exodus” features Joel Edgerton as his stepbrother, Ramses — a transformation made reasonably convincing through state-of-the-art bronzing techniques and heavy applications of guyliner (plus the exquisitely bejeweled costumes designed by Janty Yates). Yet while these are problematic choices, dictated by commercial imperatives as old as Methuselah, they are also reservations one willingly suspends as the strength of the performances and the irresistible pull of the story take hold.

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Scott’s choice of material hasn’t always been as reliable as his visual sense, but the Exodus account provides him with some solid if well-worn narrative scaffolding; given that we’ve all seen or heard some version of this story, the film’s four credit screenwriters (Adam Cooper, Bill Collage, Jeffrey Caine and Steven Zaillian) seem to instinctively grasp that a completist version would be ambitious but unnecessary. You know you’re in trustworthy hands when the film begins not with an infant floating among the reeds, but with Bale’s fully grown Moses living in the palace of the aging pharaoh Seti (John Turturro) — one of many ways in which the script shrewdly foregoes the usual framing devices in favor of a crisp, present-tense retelling.

The film swiftly establishes the brotherly bond between Moses, a favored general in Seti’s army, and Ramses, the proud pharaoh-to-be, their intimate yet rivalrous relationship sealed by the matching swords they wear into battle. Moses shows his mettle, and inadvertently fulfills a mysterious prophecy, by saving Ramses’ life in a large-scale Egyptian attack on the Hittites, an excitingly staged collision of horses and chariots, lensed by d.p. Dariusz Wolski with a mix of soaring overhead shots and ground-level combat footage.

Shortly thereafter, Moses pays a fateful visit to the city of Pithom, affording us a close-up look at the cruel machinery that has kept the Israelites enslaved for 400 years, toiling endlessly to build palaces and pyramids for their whip-cracking overlords. (The re-creation of ancient Egypt reps a staggering collaboration between production designer Arthur Max and visual effects supervisor Peter Chiang, supplemented by location shooting in Almeria, Spain, a desert backdrop made famous by “Lawrence of Arabia.”) Unsettled by these glimpses of a genocide in progress, as well as by his lifelong identity crisis, Moses eventually learns the truth of his Hebrew lineage from Nun (Ben Kingsley), a wise Jewish elder. Before long, the secret falls into the hands of a calculating Egyptian viceroy (a wonderfully louche and loathsome Ben Mendelsohn), hastening Moses’ exit from the royal family and Egypt altogether.

Propelling the film through these absorbing early passages is Bale’s broodingly intelligent Moses, a cool, eloquent man of reason who disdains the God of Israel as well as the innumerable deities of Egypt, yet whose calm, rational demeanor can also be provoked to murderous fits of fury. The story of “Exodus: Gods and Kings” hinges on the gradual reshaping of his beliefs and the healing of his fractured identity: Humbled and exiled, he makes his way to Midian, where he becomes a shepherd and marries the beautiful Zipporah (Maria Valverde), though he has a difficult time truly accepting his place among the Hebrews and the Lord they worship.

It’s telling that Moses’ first divine encounter finds him almost completely submerged in mud, literally a man about to be reformed. Purists may balk at the notion of God taking on the earthly form of a cherubic angel, Malak (Isaac Andrews), whose petulant manner and British elocution at times suggest a very young Voldemort. It’s a mild provocation of sorts, a means of getting us to see the Lord as a skeptic, like Moses would initially: callous and whimsical by turns, a jealous, vengeful deity with a literally childish streak. Before long, God orders His servant to trigger a horrific campaign of destruction against Egypt, where the Hebrews are perishing in ever greater numbers under Ramses’ oppressive rule.

At once honoring and eclipsing the showmanship of Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments” (1956), the final hour of “Exodus: Gods and Kings” is a sensationally entertaining yet beautifully modulated stream of visual wonders that make it all but impossible to tear one’s eyes from the screen. In one of his boldest strokes, Scott dramatizes the 10 plagues in a seamless, vividly realistic domino-effect montage — the bloody despoiling of the Nile (which takes a surprising page from “Jaws”) naturally giving way to a proliferation of gnats and frogs, boils and locusts — that truly does seem to capture the intensity of God’s wrath in one furious, unrelenting deluge. In keeping with the momentum established by Billy Rich’s editing and the superb vfx work, this Moses does not return to Ramses day after day with fresh entreaties of “Let my people go,” but instead remains in hiding, watching ambivalently as the Lord does their fighting for them.

“You don’t always agree with me,” God says to Moses, effectively inviting all viewers, regardless of persuasion, to wrestle with their own conflicted impulses. Scott, a self-professed agnostic whose films have nonetheless betrayed a restless spiritual dimension (particularly “Prometheus”), seems to have been inspired by his distance from the material, placing his identification with a hero who never stops questioning himself or the God he follows. Not unlike Russell Crowe’s Noah, and rather unlike Charlton Heston’s iconic barn-stormer, Bale’s Moses emerges a painfully flawed, embattled leader whose direct line to the Almighty is as much burden as blessing — and who wearily recognizes that once the Israelites have cast off the shackles of slavery, the truly hard work of governance, progress, repentance and faithfulness will begin.

Edgerton, his dark-rimmed eyes asmolder with pride and contempt, makes a powerfully understated Ramses, one who is not without his own measure of humanity: “What kind of fanatics worship such a God?!” he splutters amid the devastation of the final plague. Arriving at a time when religious divisions in the Middle East have become all too violently pronounced, the ideal of a Promised Land ever more elusive, it’s a question that resonates well beyond the story’s specific moment. And it lingers even as the film presses on toward its Red Sea climax — a brilliantly attenuated sequence that Scott stages with breathtaking suspense and deliberation, the massive CG-rendered waves never threatening to overwhelm the fraternal turmoil at the story’s core. (The theme of brotherhood torn asunder becomes unavoidably haunting when the film reveals its closing dedication to the late Tony Scott.)

That central dynamic is essential, since none of the other characters here registers with particular force: Moses’ right-hand man, Aaron (Andrew Barclay Tarbet), is reduced to a bit part, while his comrade Joshua (Aaron Paul) gets similarly short shrift, despite a memorable introduction. Elsewhere, the film’s revisionist strategy doesn’t do much to elevate the dramatic stature of the female characters: As Seti’s calculating wife Tuya, Sigourney Weaver (teaming with Scott for the third time) has little to do besides look wonderfully imperious in a Cleopatra headdress, although Hiam Abbass does manage a few emotionally charged moments as Moses’ foster mother, Bithia. As Moses’ and Ramses’ respective wives, Valverde and Golshifteh Farahani serve mainly decorative functions.

Although long enough at 150 minutes, Scott’s epic is over an hour shorter than DeMille’s, and key events — including the Israelites’ descent into idol-worshipping chaos — have been skillfully elided, perhaps awaiting a “Kingdom of Heaven”-style director’s cut. The result feels less like a straightforward retread of the biblical narrative than an amped-up commentary on it: This “Exodus” comes at you in a heady and violent onrush of incident, propelled along by Alberto Iglesias’ vigorous score, teeming with large-scale crowd and battle sequences (which take on an especially rich, tactile quality in 3D), and packed with unexpectedly rousing martial episodes, including one where Moses attempts to train his people for battle.

Some may well desire a purer, fuller version of the story, one more faithful to the text and less clearly shaped by the demands of the Hollywood blockbuster. But on its own grand, imperfect terms, “Exodus: Gods and Kings” is undeniably transporting, marked by a free-flowing visual splendor that plays to its creator’s unique strengths: Given how many faith-based movies are content to tell their audiences what to think or feel, it’s satisfying to see one whose images alone are enough to compel awestruck belief.

Reviewed at 20th Century Fox Studios, Los Angeles, Nov. 24, 2014. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 150 MIN.

• Production: A 20th Century Fox release and presentation in association with TSG Entertainment of a Chernin Entertainment/Scott Free production. Produced by Peter Chernin, Ridley Scott, Jenno Topping, Michael Schaefer, Mark Huffam. Co-producer, Adam Somner.
• Crew: Directed by Ridley Scott. Screenplay, Adam Cooper, Bill Collage, Jeffrey Caine, Steven Zaillian. Camera (color, widescreen, Red Digital Cinema, 3D), Dariusz Wolski; editor, Billy Rich; music, Alberto Iglesias; production designer, Arthur Max; supervising art directors, Marc Holmes, Benjamin Fernandez; art directors, Alex Cameron, Gavin Fitch, Matt Wynne; set decorators, Celia Bobak, Pilar Revuelta; costume designer, Janty Yates; sound (Dolby Atmos), David Stephenson; supervising sound editor/designer, Oliver Tarney; re-recording mixers, Paul Massey, Mark Taylor; special effects supervisor, Pau Costa; visual effects supervisor, Peter Chiang; visual effects producers, Jamie Stevenson, Tim Keene; visual effects, Double Negative, MPC, Scanline, Method Studios, Lola Post, Peerless; stunt coordinator, Rob Inch; 3D conversion, Stereo D; line producer (U.K.), Mary Richards; associate producer, Teresa Kelly; assistant director, Lee Grumett; second unit director, Luke Scott; second unit camera, Flavio Labiano; casting, Nina Gold.
• With: Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, John Turturro, Aaron Paul, Ben Mendelsohn, Maria Valverde, Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley, Isaac Andrews, Hiam Abbass, Indira Varma, Ewen Bremner, Golshifteh Farahani, Ghassan Massoud, Tara Fitzgerald, Maria Valverde, Andrew Barclay Tarbet.

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• DVD & Streaming

Exodus: Gods and Kings

• Action/Adventure , Drama , War

Content Caution

In Theaters

• December 12, 2014
• Christian Bale as Moses; Joel Edgerton as Ramses; Aaron Paul as Joshua; John Turturro as Seti; Maria Valverde as Zipporah; Isaac Andrews as Malak; Ben Kingsley as Nun, Sigourney Weaver as Tuya

Home Release Date

• March 17, 2015
• Ridley Scott

Distributor

• 20th Century Fox

Positive Elements   |   Spiritual Elements   |   Sexual & Romantic Content   |   Violent Content   |   Crude or Profane Language   |   Drug & Alcohol Content   |   Other Noteworthy Elements   | Conclusion

Movie Review

The gods? Pish. Moses can do without ’em.

In the ancient Egypt reconstructed here by famed film director Ridley Scott—where rivers, rocks and rising suns all have their own personal deities, where the pharaoh Seti scrutinizes animal organs for omens—Moses puts his faith in himself and his own strong right arm. As one of Seti’s most trusted generals, he knows full well the challenges facing this riverfront empire: Neither Amun nor Osiris nor any other deity is going to save the Egyptian people from the Hittites. Moses and his princely stepbrother, Ramses, at the front of the Egyptian army, stand a better chance of protecting the kingdom than a handful of goose guts.

So when a priestess uncovers an omen in some entrails—that in an upcoming battle a leader will be saved, and the savior will lead—Moses shrugs it off. And even when he does rescue Ramses from impending doom, he takes pains to minimize it. Prophecy, schmophecy.

Not Ramses, though. Even though the prince loves Moses like the brother he grows up to be, the foretelling now makes him a foe. And when Ramses hears rumors that Moses might not be Egyptian at all—that he could be, of all things, a Hebrew , one of those who were enslaved by the Egyptians 400 years earlier—Ramses knows that Moses will have to go.

Ridley’s Ramses exiles Moses to the wastelands beyond the Nile, where Moses eventually finds Jethro and his fair daughters in the land of Midian. There, he finds a wife (Zipporah), a new life (as a shepherd) … and a new God to deal with. Moses’ own son points to a mountain and tells him that it’s sacred. “God’s mountain,” he says. And when Moses hesitates to accept, Zipporah chastises him for confusing the child.

“Is it good for a boy to grow up believing in nothing?” She asks him.

“Is it bad to grow up believing in yourself?” Moses retorts.

But when a few sheep scamper up this sacred hill and Moses runs after them, something happens to shake his agnosticism. He gets knocked around and knocked out by a landslide. And when he comes to, he sees a burning bush. Beside it, a child—a child who talks as no child should.

“Who are you?” Moses asks.

“I Am,” the child tells him.

Moses told himself that he wanted nothing to do with all those gods. But it seems that God may want something to do with him.

Positive Elements

Exodus: Gods and Kings is, of course, based (sometimes quite loosely) on the biblical book of Exodus. It’s the foundational journal of the Jews in many respects, and a broadly inspirational one as well—a story of a people striving for freedom. Some of that shines through in this screenplay.

At first, Moses is a reluctant shepherd for his people. For much of the movie, he sees himself as Egyptian. He hates the idea of leaving his wife and son behind when he goes back to Egypt to retrieve his Hebrews. But go he does—demanding freedom for a people he barely knows from a government he actually quite likes. Even as God spares His people from most of the plagues, Moses suffers. We see it in his face when he hears the Egyptians grieve over their lost children, hear it in his voice when he speaks to Ramses. He’s not a prophet without a heart … but he is one who’s determined to see his job through to the end.

We see a great deal of strength in the Hebrew people as well. They’ve waited a very long time for their deliverance, and they’re willing to sacrifice a great deal to see it through. Miriam, Moses’ sister, refuses to fess up about Moses’ secret lineage, for instance, and she nearly has her hand chopped off for her trouble. (Moses winds up saving her—admitting to being Hebrew even if he doesn’t yet believe it himself.) And when Moses returns from exile and hides among the Hebrews, they refuse to give him up—even as Ramses hangs whole families to “encourage” informants.

Ramses, though, is not without virtue. As a prince, he clearly loved Moses. As king, he exiles Moses instead of executing him, and even arranges for him to keep his sword. Ramses also dearly loves his son, cradling him and doting on him in life. He’s nearly torn asunder by grief when the boy dies.

Spiritual Elements

God is obviously a big part of the Exodus story. And while Ridley Scott doesn’t make Him central here, to both his credit and detriment the director does give Him screen time.

The mysterious boy Moses talks to by the burning bush is called (in the credits) Malak, a Semitic word for angel . And Moses himself calls the child a messenger at one point. But he clearly represents someone much, much bigger. He either is God or he speaks directly for Him, calling Moses to his sacred work and triggering the plagues as well. This God is powerful … but is shown to act like a petulant, willful child. Ramses is horrified that the Hebrews would worship a God who kills children, and Moses expresses his own moments of doubt and horror too.

Because of all that, it’s easy to see a tinge of the Gnostic concept of the Demiurge at play in this lad who would be God. (Gnosticism encompasses multiple heretical deviations from Christianity. Tendrils of it hold that the Bible is really the story of two gods—one the essentially unknowable and most-high God of the New Testament, and the other a lesser, more vindictive god of the Old Testament.)

Scott also leaves open the possibility that God is a figment of Moses’ imagination—a hallucination brought on by the rock that hit his head. No one but Moses can see Him, of course. And when the plagues are in full force, Ramses’ advisors suggest they might all be the result of naturalistic causes. Even the parting of the Red Sea feels more like a weird-but-still-natural anomaly, especially at first, than a supernatural event.

Elsewhere, a priestess cuts open a bird and scans its entrails for a sign. She appeals to her gods to cleanse the blood-red Nile to no avail. She mentions petitioning a number of gods for relief. Seti is obsessed with supernatural signs. And Ramses, who initially shares Moses’ skepticism, prays to idols, touching them tentatively. A rendition of a battle insists that he was saved “only through the help of the gods.” We see a golden calf idol at a distance.

Sexual & Romantic Content

Moses and Zipporah get married. Once alone, they kiss, exchange sweet nothings and Zipporah invites him to “proceed.” He takes off only her veil before the camera retreats. We see the same sort of scene essentially repeated many years later. A woman wears a tummy-baring top.

Violent Content

Battles. Plagues. Drownings. This movie suffers from its share of death and destruction.

Egypt’s horrors open with a plague of crocodiles who bloodily chomp on several fishermen and one another as well, turning the water red (by way of blood and, according to the pharaoh’s naturalistic explanation, stirring the Nile’s red silt). This affliction results in lots and lots of dead fish. Frogs and flies follow. (We see a screaming man suck in a mouthful of flies.) People get hit with huge (but not flaming) hailstones. Then Egyptians are covered in ooky sores. (Servants remove a bloody bandage from the queen’s back.) Animals die, with more blood spilling. The final plague is not so flashy, but it’s deeply chilling: We watch children breathe deeply in their sound sleep and then, suddenly, stop—their corpses cradled by grieving parents.

On the battle field, men are killed via sword, ax and arrow. Hundreds of soldiers, horses and chariots grotesquely tumble down a mountain as the pass crumbles beneath them. A man is gruesomely run over by a chariot. Flaming arrows find their way to fishing vessels, setting them and the people inside on fire. People are dragged out of their homes, beaten, whipped and hanged (or otherwise slaughtered). Buildings and vineyards are burned.

The sea comes crashing down on the bulk of the Egyptian army, drowning nearly everyone.

Moses kills a Hebrew overseer, seriously wounds another and stabs two would-be assassins. He himself is hit in the head with a rock, and his leg boasts a nasty, bloody fracture.

The Hebrews paint their door frames with the blood of sacrificed lambs.

Crude or Profane Language

Drug & alcohol content.

Ramses milks venom from a cobra, apparently with the intention of drinking it. “A little venom in your blood is a good thing,” he tells Moses. “Makes you less vulnerable to the next poisonous bite.” Ramses seems to be a bit inebriated when he nearly chops off someone’s hand. Moses takes a sip, too.

Other Noteworthy Elements

After Moses has his first meeting with God, Zipporah—a woman of deep faith—tells him he’s imagining things.

“How do you know?” Moses asks.

“Because God is not a boy.”

This short sequence takes place 1,300 years before the birth of Jesus—when God, obviously, became a boy. That comparison won’t lessen the troublesomeness of seeing the Great I Am cast as 11-year-old Isaac Andrews.

But it’s not how God looks that’s the most troubling thing: It’s how He acts in Exodus: Gods and Kings .

In fairness, the original Exodus story is challenging to our modern and postmodern sensibilities of equality and human rights. It’s undeniably hard to read about the killing of Egypt’s first born and not feel a twinge of grief. But Scott’s God approaches the plagues with either the dispassion of a grim accountant or the anger of a boy who feels wronged. There’s no hint of sadness or love. And because Scott chose to portray Him as a boy, moviegoers may want to respond by sending the tyke to a timeout.

Which, given Scott’s outspoken anti-religion leanings, might be exactly what the director had in mind.

“The biggest source of evil is of course religion,” he told Esquire in 2012. When the interviewer pressed him on the point, Scott said, “Can you think of a good one? A just and kind and tolerant religion?”

Not in this movie.

Is the God Scott gives us “the God of compassion and mercy”? Rarely. “Slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness”? Hardly. And we haven’t even begun to talk about the plot-point deviations Scott’s Exodus takes when compared to the original text. Moses? Well, he’s far more tortured terrorist than booming Charlton Heston here. Actor Christian Bale said of his character, “I think the man was likely schizophrenic and was one of the most barbaric individuals that I ever read about in my life. … He was a very troubled, tumultuous man and mercurial. But the biggest surprise was the nature of God. He was equally very mercurial.”

Not everything takes the first exit ramp off the scriptural account, though. And the resulting combination of fact and artistic license can create some pretty robust conversations about what the Bible really does say about Moses and his mission of liberation. It’s an optimistic view that’s bolstered by us seeing that the shed blood of the Passover lamb—a foreshadowing of Christ’s awesome work on the cross so many centuries later—still protects the Israelites in this tale. And Moses does indeed begin his own personal transformation when he’s called, and he does indeed fulfill God’s directive on his life, whether he really wants to or not.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Exodus: Gods and Kings Reviews

Ridley Scott has directed an entertaining and competent version of a story we all know and has imbued it with the “realism” with which we sweeten today's fantastic stories of yesteryear. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jan 2, 2024

The most essential element lacking from the production, beyond even its historically inaccurate cast, remains the film's inability to find a new or novel relevance for an audience who has heard this story countless times before.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 16, 2022

How so many talented people came together here and just so completely whiffed on one of the most incredible stories ever written is beyond me.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Aug 10, 2021

Scott's film eschews all the Hollywood glam of DeMille's biblical epic. It's humanistic and so gritty you'll feel like taking a bath afterwards, but not in the Nile, which is turned a lurid blood red as one of the ten plagues.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 2, 2021

Attempts to tell a famous tale with a rarely experimented, distinct realism, even though the most popular interpretations are mythical.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Dec 4, 2020

It was very much pleasurable seeing all those buildings and ancient Egyptian construction work in such detail.

Full Review | Original Score: 6.5/10 | Nov 20, 2020

Even if we don't consider the racial problems in casting, the emotional motivations are flimsy at best. No amount of pretty visuals can mask clunky dialogue and thinly veiled characters.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Jul 16, 2020

A film awash in dubious logic and problematic decisions.

Full Review | Original Score: D+ | Jul 7, 2020

Sadly, by the time we get to much of the action, it doesn't have any weight. Why build such a real world if you're not going to populate it with interesting people?

Full Review | Apr 15, 2020

[T]he visual spectacle is reason enough to see Exodus: Gods and Kings. [Dariusz] Wolski's imagery is also fueled by the production design of Arthur Max which is beyond impressive.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 14, 2019

Too solemn in its mighty grandeur, Scott's treatment seems already mummified.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 12, 2019

John Turturro, Aaron Paul, Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley add support in this sometimes campy and shallow, sometimes solemn, but mostly absorbing interpretation of the story of Moses.

Full Review | Aug 5, 2019

That the film's only exuberant display of cinematic prowess is reserved for an extended 30-minute sequence of God raining His wrath down on the ruling class won't be lost on viewers in the year 2014, which has seen so much racial injustice...

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Jul 16, 2019

Ridley Scott may be 77, but he's making films with the energy and ambition of a man half his age.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 31, 2019

Irónicamente, la ola de muerte levantada por las diez plagas le da algo de vida a la película, pero es algo meramente visual como ver el agua transformarse en sangre o a una manada de cocodrilos comerse entre sí.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/ 10 | Jan 19, 2019

It primarily seems to exist to host its excellent action sequences. Mainly, it's what most of us would expect, for better and worse.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Dec 20, 2018

Even though all of the contrived melodrama and less than ardent acting, Scott's direction makes EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS a valuable piece of filmmaking

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Dec 8, 2018

Controversy and constant déjà-vus aside, the latest telling sure is gorgeous but can leave you feeling empty. Might be acceptable, if all you need is pretty sights.

Full Review | Oct 10, 2018

In terms of sheer scale, Ridley has succeeded in his endeavours.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 22, 2018

You'll feel like you're sitting through a boring sermon, delivered by somebody who had too much to drink the night before and just wants to go back to bed.

Full Review | May 23, 2018