Essentially a very well-made film, but the writing was severely
lacking, (or else the editing made a mess of thing) because this had a
number of extremely confusing places where there were jumps in the plot
and in time that were almost impossible to grasp. Also – and I shudder
to say this – this is one of those movies where the book is better. Not
that I’m a fan (I’m actually quite shocked to discover how much I
remember form school and surprised at how nerdy I got in my head here…)
but come on! They even forwent that epic bit with Moses parting the sea
with his staff! And yet they forced in other elements of the plot that
seemed to be only there for the heck of it and because they didn’t want
to leave anything out so hey! Let’s give this thorn bush a minute to
burn in the background of some obscure vision scene with a creepy child
stacking cubes just because we can’t have a Moses-film without that…
Anyway, I haven’t read the Book in a while but I remember this whole
thing differently… wow, and turning Moses into the leader of a genuine
terrorist group is NOT a way to gain sympathies. In fact, he does not
seem to have any other role than being a splinter cell leader while God
does all the work but without taking credit for it, making it seem like
random acts of violent mother nature. In the bible, Moses at least was
some kind of messenger, an emissary proclaiming the seven plagues (that
would have been cool stuff to see) but here, he’s just a weary victim
along with all of his people…
On the plus side, they tried to show Moses as a tortured, doubting,
human character in a bid for three-dimensionalism, so kudos for that,
though he was a picture-perfect copy of Aronofsky’s Noah, which negates
the whole thing again in a way.
Anyway, acting-wise this was really good. I love Christian Bale and he
did not disappoint. The kid playing God was absolutely fantastic, too!
Very serious acting there! Good casting choice!
Visually, this was great, too. Ridley Scott tends to get that part done
right. I feel sorry for the horses, though and hope there weren’t any
injured animals (or stuntmen for that matter) during the shoot.
Fantastic soundtrack, too.
So, if you don’t know the book it’s probably quite an ok film. Then
again, a lot of stuff might not make sense… Also, this is seriously
missing the gravitas it deserves and it completely failed to involve me
emotionally.
So, despite the length, not a complete waste of time.