Novelist Iona Brodie temporarily takes over the reins of Strange Colour to give vent to her feelings about Ridley Scott's latest...
Starring: Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, Ben Kingsley
Writers: Adam Cooper, Bill Collage, Jeffrey Caine, Steven Zaillian
Director: Ridley Scott
Ah, Ridley Scott, my memories of you are fond indeed. Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator and Black Hawk Down, to name but a small selection, are all completely awesome movies. Alas, my love affair is no more after sitting through 150 minutes of the Biblical epic that is Exodus: Gods and Kings.
It all started off very promisingly with
serious thesp Christian Bale looking all serious and stuff as Moses and Joel
Edgerton, best known for kicking the crap out of Tom Hardy in Warrior, looking
all oily and gold and stuff as Ramses. The sibling rivalry is immediately and
clumsily set up with the sack-clad and guyliner-free Moses good and obedient to
their Father whilst Ramses, looking like a man who has ram raided Lizzie Duke
and is wearing all of the loot, depicted as bad with a preference to wrestling
snakes over looking after the people of the realm. Moses is quickly informed by
a scandalously underused Ben Kingsley that he is really a Hebrew and that his
Mother is really his sister (or something like that). This fact is soon leaked
and Moses has to flee.
After some wandering in the Desert and
a suspiciously quick marriage to a goatherder's daughter Moses is compelled
after a head injury by God, rendered most unconvincingly as a small child, to
go back to Pithom and lead his people. Queue the plagues.
“Plagues,” I thought, as I sat in the
dark staring at the screen and rubbing my hands. “Now things will really start
to get going.” Alas, all that got going was an hour of the six o clock news
filled with unrelenting misery highlighted by an annoying pan-pipey soundtrack.
Some crops got munched and stuff. Some people got spots and stuff. Even the
death of the first born son was a bit boring and stuff (although I do have to
to give a special shout out to the plague of man eating crocodiles that somehow
managed to make death and misery laugh out loud funny).
The pivotal scene where Moses parts the
sea was surprisingly underwhelming, played like a tidal anomaly rather than a
miracle. A fitting metaphor for this film itself.
They had $200M to spend on this film
and I find it quite amazing that they managed to put on such an instantly forgettable spectacle. Yes, the special effects were good but there is not one moment that
sticks in my mind like say, the first encounter with the face hugger in Alien.
It all feels a little glib, glossy and irrelevant.
Iona Brodie's novella "Dark Waters of the Heart" is out now. Her novel "Hot Voodoo" is due to be published later this year. Follow Iona on Twitter: @IonaB_writer
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