The white-washing of the cast of Exodus: Gods and Kings has been part of the conversation ever since Christian Bale was cast as Moses, Joel Edgerton was cast as the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses and it was announced white actors would largely make up the cast of Egyptian and Hebrew characters in Ridley Scott‘s retelling of the Biblical story. Even Scott weighed in saying, “I can’t mount a film of this budget, where I have to rely on tax rebates in Spain, and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such,” leaving very little else to discuss when it comes to the lack of imagination shown in the casting. So I’ll leave it at that and attempt to look at the movie despite this aspect, though I guess the racial ignorance is the most compelling aspect of this 2.5 hour monstrosity, which is yet another example of Hollywood’s inability to do anything more than create giant digital effects and hope the audience is wowed into acceptance.
The battle scenes are big and uninspired, the effects are aplenty and mascara and beards are commonplace in Ridley Scott’s Biblical epic as the story of Moses is retold with an emphasis on effects and a disinterest in storytelling. What happens? Whether you already know or not, you don’t care, though kudos to Bale for actually giving it his all in a movie he should have turned down outright.
Edgerton does his best to ham it up as Ramses while Ben Mendelsohn as Pithom Viceroy, Hegep, is some of the most interesting bit of casting the film has to offer as he sashays around the set, seedy, sinister and entirely campy. In fact, the campy bits are the best part. There is entertainment to be found in Ewen Bremner as a medicine man with anything but the right answers for the plagues upon Egypt and Indira Varma as an oracle that delivers more punchlines than prophecies.
These characters are great and had the film fully embraced their tone rather than this air of self-seriousness Exodus might have actually been entertaining. It also could have cost less as they could have made the sets out of construction paper and cardboard, and treated it all like the joke it appears to be. But by the time a lone white horse is inexplicably crushed by an oncoming wave and Moses is seen sitting on the shore watching sharks attack a dying horse (this movie really hates horses), I had to ask myself just what kind of movie Ridley Scott thought he was making.
I guess there is something interesting about portraying God as a young boy that can only be seen by Moses, a vision that comes only after Moses is struck on the head. However, as interesting as that may have been, I found it more curious and distracting that every time Moses has a little chat with the young man, Aaron Paul‘s character, Joshua, is seen eavesdropping on their conversation. Why does Scott continually show him eavesdropping? Just call it a passing interest because I honestly have no idea.
And why is it necessary to show so many needless inserts of camels walking and slaves doing hard labor? I get it. You get it. We all get it, they are slaves and they are being mistreated. Let’s move on to character dynamics rather than plot exposition that has already been more than established.
Everything about this bloated mess plays like a movie telling us to just wait for the big action moments and the disastrous plagues. Here comes the hail and the locusts. Oh boy. Hey, look, a giant wave! Exciting! Don’t worry about the fact you don’t care about anyone about to be crushed or even know any of the characters that just fell to their death as their horses tumble down a cliffside. Character deaths are supposed to be tragic, but in Exodus they come across more as a passing ho-hum as yet another digital horse and its rider are removed from the cinematic canvas.
Exodus is a bad movie. It’s an uninteresting and boring movie fit to be made fun of and otherwise ignored. It will be forgotten before the year is over and perhaps, by me, even sooner.
