Ridley Scott may indeed still be a legitimate Director’s Director. Let’s face it: very few operating in the studio system today can compose a shot that, divorced entirely from the encompassing story being told, remains a thrilling work of art on its own. Let’s also face the harder reality: Scott’s thorough inattention—or perhaps reading-comprehension deficiency?—to the screenplays that find their way to his desk is absolutely killing his movie legacy. His latest, the Old Testament redux Exodus: Gods and Kings, is yet another unmistakable example of the former disastrously undone by the latter.
Moses Begins, sorry, Exodus joins the future Deliverer (Christian Bale) as “brother” to Ramses (Joel Edgerton) while they wage preemptive war on the Hittites, with Moses humiliating Ramses by saving his life in battle. Ramses also has a Cairo-sized chip on his shoulder because his father, Seti (John Turturro, seemingly the only actor allowed to revel in the extravagance of the overblown production), demonstrates greater admiration for his adopted Hebrew son. Ramses is more than ready to believe the accusation that Moses is a secret Member of the Tribe who survived the culling of all firstborn Hebrews decades prior. Following the death of Pharaoh Seti, Queen Tuya (Sigourney Weaver, thanklessly marginalized) moves to have Moses executed. Ramses overrules, and instead has him banished. (Credit where it’s due to Edgerton, delivering a tyrannical Pharaoh who’s far more sympathetic and conflicted than he might be otherwise, given the majority of the script’s characters are cardboard cutouts.)
Moses finally arrives at a small village, settles into a rural shepherding life, takes a wife (María Valverde) and fathers a boy. Finally! Bale’s Bruce Wayne accent makes a pinch more sense here than it did among the Egyptian royalty—who all, of course, speak with such crisp Britishness. (Is it even worth mentioning how blindingly all-white the cast is of a story set in Northeast Africa? No? Is it at least worth mentioning how many of the actors appear in bronze-face, only to lose and regain their faux pigmentation in subsequent scenes?)