Exodus: Gods and Kings

Given the events that have taken place in my life recently, I'm pretty much at the point to where I'll date a wet blanket if the opportunity arises; and I'm not just talking metaphorically either. I would expect to see me walking down the street with a blow up doll like Ryan Gosling did in Lars and the Real Girl real soon; the struggle is that real y'all. And it appears as though the internet is aware of my struggles because I just received an email with the subject line "Asian Beauties?", well normally I wouldn't Al Gore but today...YES! I guess this explains why Christian Bale decided to wear guyliner and a brown spray tan in his latest movie Exodus; some dark times must have fallen upon his household too. "We're f'n done in the bedroom! You hear me? We're f'n done!!!"

Every 5 years or so Ridley Scott feels the need to make these historical epics that are always 30 minutes too long and have breathtaking women in them that never get naked. He's seriously one editor and a Kate Winslet casting away from winning both an Oscar and my heart at the same time. Well this movie is no different.

Exodus is about one of the Bible's most famous stories, God's liberation of the Israelites from Egypt. It starts off by showing you the friendship that existed between Moses (Bale) and Pharaoh's son Ramses (Joel Edgerton) and how it came to an abrupt stop when Moses' Hebrew heritage was brought to light. He is immediately sent off to be with the Israelis but has not fully accepted being a part of them; that is until he sees a representation of God through the burning bush and his messenger, a little boy who reveals his plan of liberation to him.

For whatever reason when modern day directors read, skim, or hear stories of the Old Testament, they come away thinking that characters like Noah or Moses were gangsters who somehow knew martial arts and swordplay. Moses in this movie is basically William Wallace's great great grandfather as he leads a band of rebels in random fights against the Egyptians. There are Braveheart esque training sequences and even a scene that's ripped straight from 300:Rise of an Empire where they set fire to boats in a harbor; it's pretty comical but also fresh.

The problem is the set up to the movie is way too long and drawn out; far too much time is spent on Moses and Ramses's friendship. By the time you get to the ten plagues God unleashed upon Egypt, you're half asleep but thankfully the scenes are so awesome that they wake you back up. The parting of the sea is pretty epic and fairly funny but not quite Charleston Heston fresh as Scott decides to go another route with it.

Given the fact that you do finally get to see modern day technology's take on what happened all those centuries ago, this film is entertaining but it's way too slow at times. But thankfully there are plenty of scenes involving Moses's hot wife Zipporah(Maria Valverde) that more than make up for the flaws, so for that reason I rate this movie as FRESH!