IF
you HAVE to see EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS see it in 3D or don’t bother
seeing it. The only reason for seeing this film is for the special
effects. I sat there wishing Anne Baxter or Yul Brynner  would come on
screen and start chewing the scenery! I never thought I would think of
Charleton Heston as a great actor but I did watching this. If you don’t
know what I am talking about please see THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, a 1956
American religious epic film produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille,
that was cheesy and camp!

Aside from taking many liberties with
the Bible this film is seriously miscast with the two male leads.
Christian Bale seems to have only two expressions, neither appropriate
to the role of Moses as a leader. We know that ’a child should lead
them’ but God as a child? Oh to hear Cecil B. DeMille’s booming voice!
Joel Edgerton, as Ramses, has Brynner’s build but wears a lot more
mascara.

Sigourney Weaver is completely wasted as Ramses’s
mother but then most of the women in the film are a second thought. Ben
Kingsley and John Turtuuro are given little to work with but do what
they can with the underwritten roles.

It took 4 writers: Adam
Cooper, Bill Collage, Jeffrey Caine and Steven Zaillian  to write a
script that lets all the actors down and  Ridley Scott, the director,
and one of the producers, certainly loves the blood and gore.

Getting
back to the special effects while DeMille had a lot less money and
nowhere near the techniques available today most of his effects were
cheesy and funny but Scott does everything he can, using every
technical  aspect available to show the plagues and, yes, his parting of
the sea is spectacular.

Just for the record, and this may be a
mark against me, as I watched Moses etch the tablets--yes he does--while
tea is supplied by God, I couldn’t get Mel Brooks, as Moses, in his
film HISTORY OF THE WORLD PART 1 dropping the third tablet. If you
haven’t seen this film and/or the Cecil B. DeMille’s film do yourself a
favor and watch them instead of seeing EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS!