movie review about exodus

Exodus: Gods and Kings

A numbing and soulless spectacle of 3-D, computer-generated imagery run amok, Ridley Scott ’s “Exodus: Gods and Kings” presents an enduring tale by pummeling us over the head with it.

The story of Moses rising up against the Pharaoh Ramses and leading hundreds of thousands of Hebrew slaves out of Egypt to freedom is one with which we’re all extremely familiar. It’s the entire point of Passover. Scott is not reinventing the wheel here. Rather, he’s invented the biggest, shiniest, noisiest wheel imaginable, then he runs over us with it rather than inviting us along for the ride.

Certainly, there’s an allure to seeing this sort of old-fashioned, biblical epic on the big screen–and indeed, within this proliferation of pixels, there is undeniable craft and heft to the massive set pieces and behemoth battles. From the costumes to the weaponry to the interiors, it’s obvious that Scott’s team took great care in considering and creating every detail. But the film as a whole (with a script credited to Adam Cooper & Bill Collage and Jeffrey Caine and Steven Zaillian ) feels overstuffed and over-glossed. Self-serious to a fault, it packs in more and more in terms of story and extravagant visuals while offering too little in terms of actual character development and engaging drama.

When he’s been at his absolute best in his lengthy career, directing films like “ Blade Runner ” and “ Alien ” and even “Thelma & Louise,” Scott has established himself as a visionary and a master of creating imagery that would go on to be iconic. “Exodus” feels oddly impersonal. It’s hard to tell what Scott’s point is here, beyond making his Academy Award-winning “ Gladiator ” look like an independent film by comparison. Earlier this year, “Gladiator” star Russell Crowe played the title character in Darren Aronofsky ’s “ Noah .” That was a biblical epic which also was massive in scope but at the same time beautiful and strange; it stayed true to its source material but found an intriguing and challenging tone. It actually evoked emotion.

In “Exodus,” the plagues are fun, briefly, and that’s about it. At least, the prospect of the plagues presents the promise of fun: “Eww, gross, a massive pile of frogs,” or: “Aww, yeah, here come the locusts.” But like so much else in the film, these potentially thrilling sequences of havoc and terror evolve into enormous swarms digitally divorced from their effect on humanity. (The boils, though–they remain. And they’re nasty.)

It certainly doesn’t help that Christian Bale plays Moses in mostly stiff and detached fashion. (But hey, at least he’s more intelligible here than he is as a grumbling and tormented Batman). Here, he’s a quietly capable leader –a general among men, and in the eyes of the Pharaoh Seti ( John Turturro ), who raised Moses as his adopted son, clearly more capable to take over the kingdom than his own biological son, the preening and egotistical Ramses ( Joel Edgerton ). Despite the thick eyeliner, the shiny, bald pate and the radiant golden wardrobe, Edgerton is never quite flamboyant enough. He could have gone over the top with the role and helped breathe some life into this picture. He seems sadly uncomfortable.

Once it’s revealed that Moses is actually, you know, Jewish, he’s cast into exile, where he forges a pleasant, new life for himself as a sheepherder with a wife and a son. Meanwhile, over the past nine years, Ramses has assumed power and essentially turned Memphis into Las Vegas: overbuilt, overpopulated and so generally overwhelmed that slaves are being burned to death just to thin the place out. (It seems entirely possible that Scott does not get the irony of constructing something that is simply too big.)

It’s at this time that Moses starts seeing visions and receiving instructions as to his true purpose: to return to his homeland and free his people. God appears to him as an impish British schoolboy, which is a rather clever idea. In retrospect, Old Testament God does seem rather capricious and destructive in ways that remind me of my overtired 5-year-old son playing with his Legos after a long day at school. But that casting represents a rare moment of innovation in a film that may as well come with a checklist at the door. Even the parting of the Red Sea–which should be a spectacular event generating legitimate excitement–suggests the draining of a massive bathtub.

Ben Kingsley appears in a woefully small role as Nun, the elderly scholar who shares the news with Moses about his true heritage, yet he can’t help but infuse his few moments with great dignity. As Joshua, who helps Moses lead the slaves out of Egypt, Aaron Paul is mostly relegated to sticking by Moses’ side, a huge waste of both his presence and his ordinarily inspired instincts. Sigourney Weaver gets even less to do as Ramses’ haughty mother, Tuya, while Hiam Abbass , as Moses’ mother, Bithia, has only a handful of lines of dialogue.

So why is this blockbuster different from all other blockbusters? It’s not. There’s just more of it. And less.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series “Ebert Presents At the Movies” opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

John Turturro as Seti
Indira Varma as Miriam
Joel Edgerton as Rhamses
María Valverde as Séfora
Sigourney Weaver as Tuya
Aaron Paul as Joshua
Ben Mendelsohn as Hegep
Golshifteh Farahani as Nefertari
Christian Bale as Moses
Ben Kingsley as Nun
Adam Cooper
Bill Collage
Steven Zaillian

Director of Photography

Dariusz Wolski
Ridley Scott

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‘exodus: gods and kings’: what the critics are saying.

Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, John Turturro, Ben Mendolsohn, Ben Kingsley, Aaron Paul and Sigourney Weaver star in Ridley Scott's Biblical epic

By Ashley Lee

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Exodus: Gods and Kings , out Friday, stars Christian Bale as Moses in the Biblical epic, opposite Joel Edgerton as his brother and ruler. Also starring John Turturro, Ben Mendolsohn, Ben Kingsley, Aaron Paul and Sigourney Weaver , Ridley Scott’s adaptation of the Israelites’ journey out of Egypt is updated with 3D technology.

Still, Exodus won’t match the other big-budget Biblical epic this year , Darren Aronofsky’s Noah. Pr erelease tracking suggests it may open in the $25 million to $30 million range, behind the $43.7 million debut of Noah .

Read more Christian Bale Defends ‘Exodus’ Casting, A New Kind of Moses and Epic Special Effects

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Film Review: ‘Exodus: Gods and Kings’

An improbably Anglo-led cast aside, Ridley Scott's Old Testament epic is a genuinely imposing spectacle.

By Justin Chang

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“It’s not even that good a story,” Moses grumbles early on in Ridley Scott ‘s “ Exodus: Gods and Kings ,” shortly after learning of the mysterious events that transformed a lowly Hebrew slave into a full-blown prince of Egypt. It’s a sly, knowing wink from a filmmaker who clearly has a terrific tale on his hands, yet faces a bit of a challenge in selling it to a more cynical, less easily razzle-dazzled audience than those that greeted the biblical epics of yesteryear. What’s remarkable about Scott’s genuinely imposing Old Testament psychodrama is the degree to which he succeeds in conjuring a mighty and momentous spectacle — one that, for sheer astonishment, rivals any of the lavish visions of ancient times the director has given us — while turning his own skepticism into a potent source of moral and dramatic conflict.

If this estimable account of how God delivered His people out of Egypt feels like a movie for a decidedly secular age, its searching, non-doctrinaire approach arguably gets closer to penetrating the mystery of faith than a more fawning approach might have managed. Like “Noah,” the year’s other nonconformist Judeo-Christian blockbuster, this is an uncommonly intelligent, respectful but far-from-reverent outsider’s take on Scripture, although “Exodus” is less madly eccentric and more firmly grounded in the sword-and-sandal tradition than Darren Aronofsky’s film, and will almost certainly prove less polarizing among believers. Even with a hefty $140 million pricetag and a two-and-a-half-hour running time to overcome, Fox’s year-end release (opening Dec. 12 Stateside) should ride 3D ticket premiums and general curiosity to muscular returns worldwide, landing closer to “Gladiator” than “Kingdom of Heaven” territory in terms of audience satisfaction and commercial payoff.

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If there’s a controversial talking point here, it’s that Scott’s film continues the dubious tradition of casting white actors in an English-language picture set at the meeting point of Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Plenty of ink has already been spilled over the injustice of yet another major historical drama ceding the big roles to Hollywood royalty while relegating blacks, Arabs and other actors of color to the background: In addition to Christian Bale ‘s star turn as Moses, “Exodus” features Joel Edgerton as his stepbrother, Ramses — a transformation made reasonably convincing through state-of-the-art bronzing techniques and heavy applications of guyliner (plus the exquisitely bejeweled costumes designed by Janty Yates). Yet while these are problematic choices, dictated by commercial imperatives as old as Methuselah, they are also reservations one willingly suspends as the strength of the performances and the irresistible pull of the story take hold.

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Scott’s choice of material hasn’t always been as reliable as his visual sense, but the Exodus account provides him with some solid if well-worn narrative scaffolding; given that we’ve all seen or heard some version of this story, the film’s four credit screenwriters (Adam Cooper, Bill Collage, Jeffrey Caine and Steven Zaillian) seem to instinctively grasp that a completist version would be ambitious but unnecessary. You know you’re in trustworthy hands when the film begins not with an infant floating among the reeds, but with Bale’s fully grown Moses living in the palace of the aging pharaoh Seti (John Turturro) — one of many ways in which the script shrewdly foregoes the usual framing devices in favor of a crisp, present-tense retelling.

The film swiftly establishes the brotherly bond between Moses, a favored general in Seti’s army, and Ramses, the proud pharaoh-to-be, their intimate yet rivalrous relationship sealed by the matching swords they wear into battle. Moses shows his mettle, and inadvertently fulfills a mysterious prophecy, by saving Ramses’ life in a large-scale Egyptian attack on the Hittites, an excitingly staged collision of horses and chariots, lensed by d.p. Dariusz Wolski with a mix of soaring overhead shots and ground-level combat footage.

Shortly thereafter, Moses pays a fateful visit to the city of Pithom, affording us a close-up look at the cruel machinery that has kept the Israelites enslaved for 400 years, toiling endlessly to build palaces and pyramids for their whip-cracking overlords. (The re-creation of ancient Egypt reps a staggering collaboration between production designer Arthur Max and visual effects supervisor Peter Chiang, supplemented by location shooting in Almeria, Spain, a desert backdrop made famous by “Lawrence of Arabia.”) Unsettled by these glimpses of a genocide in progress, as well as by his lifelong identity crisis, Moses eventually learns the truth of his Hebrew lineage from Nun (Ben Kingsley), a wise Jewish elder. Before long, the secret falls into the hands of a calculating Egyptian viceroy (a wonderfully louche and loathsome Ben Mendelsohn), hastening Moses’ exit from the royal family and Egypt altogether.

Propelling the film through these absorbing early passages is Bale’s broodingly intelligent Moses, a cool, eloquent man of reason who disdains the God of Israel as well as the innumerable deities of Egypt, yet whose calm, rational demeanor can also be provoked to murderous fits of fury. The story of “Exodus: Gods and Kings” hinges on the gradual reshaping of his beliefs and the healing of his fractured identity: Humbled and exiled, he makes his way to Midian, where he becomes a shepherd and marries the beautiful Zipporah (Maria Valverde), though he has a difficult time truly accepting his place among the Hebrews and the Lord they worship.

It’s telling that Moses’ first divine encounter finds him almost completely submerged in mud, literally a man about to be reformed. Purists may balk at the notion of God taking on the earthly form of a cherubic angel, Malak (Isaac Andrews), whose petulant manner and British elocution at times suggest a very young Voldemort. It’s a mild provocation of sorts, a means of getting us to see the Lord as a skeptic, like Moses would initially: callous and whimsical by turns, a jealous, vengeful deity with a literally childish streak. Before long, God orders His servant to trigger a horrific campaign of destruction against Egypt, where the Hebrews are perishing in ever greater numbers under Ramses’ oppressive rule.

At once honoring and eclipsing the showmanship of Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments” (1956), the final hour of “Exodus: Gods and Kings” is a sensationally entertaining yet beautifully modulated stream of visual wonders that make it all but impossible to tear one’s eyes from the screen. In one of his boldest strokes, Scott dramatizes the 10 plagues in a seamless, vividly realistic domino-effect montage — the bloody despoiling of the Nile (which takes a surprising page from “Jaws”) naturally giving way to a proliferation of gnats and frogs, boils and locusts — that truly does seem to capture the intensity of God’s wrath in one furious, unrelenting deluge. In keeping with the momentum established by Billy Rich’s editing and the superb vfx work, this Moses does not return to Ramses day after day with fresh entreaties of “Let my people go,” but instead remains in hiding, watching ambivalently as the Lord does their fighting for them.

“You don’t always agree with me,” God says to Moses, effectively inviting all viewers, regardless of persuasion, to wrestle with their own conflicted impulses. Scott, a self-professed agnostic whose films have nonetheless betrayed a restless spiritual dimension (particularly “Prometheus”), seems to have been inspired by his distance from the material, placing his identification with a hero who never stops questioning himself or the God he follows. Not unlike Russell Crowe’s Noah, and rather unlike Charlton Heston’s iconic barn-stormer, Bale’s Moses emerges a painfully flawed, embattled leader whose direct line to the Almighty is as much burden as blessing — and who wearily recognizes that once the Israelites have cast off the shackles of slavery, the truly hard work of governance, progress, repentance and faithfulness will begin.

Edgerton, his dark-rimmed eyes asmolder with pride and contempt, makes a powerfully understated Ramses, one who is not without his own measure of humanity: “What kind of fanatics worship such a God?!” he splutters amid the devastation of the final plague. Arriving at a time when religious divisions in the Middle East have become all too violently pronounced, the ideal of a Promised Land ever more elusive, it’s a question that resonates well beyond the story’s specific moment. And it lingers even as the film presses on toward its Red Sea climax — a brilliantly attenuated sequence that Scott stages with breathtaking suspense and deliberation, the massive CG-rendered waves never threatening to overwhelm the fraternal turmoil at the story’s core. (The theme of brotherhood torn asunder becomes unavoidably haunting when the film reveals its closing dedication to the late Tony Scott.)

That central dynamic is essential, since none of the other characters here registers with particular force: Moses’ right-hand man, Aaron (Andrew Barclay Tarbet), is reduced to a bit part, while his comrade Joshua (Aaron Paul) gets similarly short shrift, despite a memorable introduction. Elsewhere, the film’s revisionist strategy doesn’t do much to elevate the dramatic stature of the female characters: As Seti’s calculating wife Tuya, Sigourney Weaver (teaming with Scott for the third time) has little to do besides look wonderfully imperious in a Cleopatra headdress, although Hiam Abbass does manage a few emotionally charged moments as Moses’ foster mother, Bithia. As Moses’ and Ramses’ respective wives, Valverde and Golshifteh Farahani serve mainly decorative functions.

Although long enough at 150 minutes, Scott’s epic is over an hour shorter than DeMille’s, and key events — including the Israelites’ descent into idol-worshipping chaos — have been skillfully elided, perhaps awaiting a “Kingdom of Heaven”-style director’s cut. The result feels less like a straightforward retread of the biblical narrative than an amped-up commentary on it: This “Exodus” comes at you in a heady and violent onrush of incident, propelled along by Alberto Iglesias’ vigorous score, teeming with large-scale crowd and battle sequences (which take on an especially rich, tactile quality in 3D), and packed with unexpectedly rousing martial episodes, including one where Moses attempts to train his people for battle.

Some may well desire a purer, fuller version of the story, one more faithful to the text and less clearly shaped by the demands of the Hollywood blockbuster. But on its own grand, imperfect terms, “Exodus: Gods and Kings” is undeniably transporting, marked by a free-flowing visual splendor that plays to its creator’s unique strengths: Given how many faith-based movies are content to tell their audiences what to think or feel, it’s satisfying to see one whose images alone are enough to compel awestruck belief.

Reviewed at 20th Century Fox Studios, Los Angeles, Nov. 24, 2014. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 150 MIN.

Production: A 20th Century Fox release and presentation in association with TSG Entertainment of a Chernin Entertainment/Scott Free production. Produced by Peter Chernin, Ridley Scott, Jenno Topping, Michael Schaefer, Mark Huffam. Co-producer, Adam Somner.
Crew: Directed by Ridley Scott. Screenplay, Adam Cooper, Bill Collage, Jeffrey Caine, Steven Zaillian. Camera (color, widescreen, Red Digital Cinema, 3D), Dariusz Wolski; editor, Billy Rich; music, Alberto Iglesias; production designer, Arthur Max; supervising art directors, Marc Holmes, Benjamin Fernandez; art directors, Alex Cameron, Gavin Fitch, Matt Wynne; set decorators, Celia Bobak, Pilar Revuelta; costume designer, Janty Yates; sound (Dolby Atmos), David Stephenson; supervising sound editor/designer, Oliver Tarney; re-recording mixers, Paul Massey, Mark Taylor; special effects supervisor, Pau Costa; visual effects supervisor, Peter Chiang; visual effects producers, Jamie Stevenson, Tim Keene; visual effects, Double Negative, MPC, Scanline, Method Studios, Lola Post, Peerless; stunt coordinator, Rob Inch; 3D conversion, Stereo D; line producer (U.K.), Mary Richards; associate producer, Teresa Kelly; assistant director, Lee Grumett; second unit director, Luke Scott; second unit camera, Flavio Labiano; casting, Nina Gold.
With: Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, John Turturro, Aaron Paul, Ben Mendelsohn, Maria Valverde, Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley, Isaac Andrews, Hiam Abbass, Indira Varma, Ewen Bremner, Golshifteh Farahani, Ghassan Massoud, Tara Fitzgerald, Maria Valverde, Andrew Barclay Tarbet.

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Exodus: Gods and Kings Reviews

Ridley Scott has directed an entertaining and competent version of a story we all know and has imbued it with the “realism” with which we sweeten today's fantastic stories of yesteryear. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jan 2, 2024

The most essential element lacking from the production, beyond even its historically inaccurate cast, remains the film's inability to find a new or novel relevance for an audience who has heard this story countless times before.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 16, 2022

How so many talented people came together here and just so completely whiffed on one of the most incredible stories ever written is beyond me.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Aug 10, 2021

Scott's film eschews all the Hollywood glam of DeMille's biblical epic. It's humanistic and so gritty you'll feel like taking a bath afterwards, but not in the Nile, which is turned a lurid blood red as one of the ten plagues.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 2, 2021

Attempts to tell a famous tale with a rarely experimented, distinct realism, even though the most popular interpretations are mythical.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Dec 4, 2020

It was very much pleasurable seeing all those buildings and ancient Egyptian construction work in such detail.

Full Review | Original Score: 6.5/10 | Nov 20, 2020

Even if we don't consider the racial problems in casting, the emotional motivations are flimsy at best. No amount of pretty visuals can mask clunky dialogue and thinly veiled characters.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Jul 16, 2020

A film awash in dubious logic and problematic decisions.

Full Review | Original Score: D+ | Jul 7, 2020

Sadly, by the time we get to much of the action, it doesn't have any weight. Why build such a real world if you're not going to populate it with interesting people?

Full Review | Apr 15, 2020

[T]he visual spectacle is reason enough to see Exodus: Gods and Kings. [Dariusz] Wolski's imagery is also fueled by the production design of Arthur Max which is beyond impressive.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 14, 2019

Too solemn in its mighty grandeur, Scott's treatment seems already mummified.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 12, 2019

John Turturro, Aaron Paul, Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley add support in this sometimes campy and shallow, sometimes solemn, but mostly absorbing interpretation of the story of Moses.

Full Review | Aug 5, 2019

That the film's only exuberant display of cinematic prowess is reserved for an extended 30-minute sequence of God raining His wrath down on the ruling class won't be lost on viewers in the year 2014, which has seen so much racial injustice...

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Jul 16, 2019

Ridley Scott may be 77, but he's making films with the energy and ambition of a man half his age.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 31, 2019

Irónicamente, la ola de muerte levantada por las diez plagas le da algo de vida a la película, pero es algo meramente visual como ver el agua transformarse en sangre o a una manada de cocodrilos comerse entre sí.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/ 10 | Jan 19, 2019

It primarily seems to exist to host its excellent action sequences. Mainly, it's what most of us would expect, for better and worse.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Dec 20, 2018

Even though all of the contrived melodrama and less than ardent acting, Scott's direction makes EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS a valuable piece of filmmaking

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Dec 8, 2018

Controversy and constant déjà-vus aside, the latest telling sure is gorgeous but can leave you feeling empty. Might be acceptable, if all you need is pretty sights.

Full Review | Oct 10, 2018

In terms of sheer scale, Ridley has succeeded in his endeavours.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 22, 2018

You'll feel like you're sitting through a boring sermon, delivered by somebody who had too much to drink the night before and just wants to go back to bed.

Full Review | May 23, 2018

Den of Geek

Exodus: Gods and Kings Review

Exodus: Gods and Kings works best when it's about Christian Bale's unique Moses and his desire to discipline God.

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Ridley Scott is deliberately walking over holy ground with Exodus: Gods and Kings , and I’m not just talking about the old Hebrew tale. Oft repeated, the story of Moses and his spiritual battle with Pharaoh is nonetheless most associated in the collective imagination with Charlton Heston, shrouded in a ridiculously big bushy beard, parting the Red Sea with almost as much fanaticism as his director Cecil B. DeMille exuded in mounting The Ten Commandments . Twice.

Yet, Scott’s own Exodus: Gods and Kings comes from a very different place and with a refreshingly inventive take on Moses. As embodied by a boisterously fierce Christian Bale, the man who went up the mountain came back down ready to kick some ass, be it that of Egyptians, doubting Hebrews, or even Exodus’ peculiar representation of God Himself. Most of all, however, Scott zeroes this story in on the brotherhood of Moses and Rhamses, and what it means to lose it. This knowing agony informs the movie well enough to overcome its own considerable plagues (of which there are many).

At the risk of sounding redundant in the 21 st century, Exodus: Gods and Kings is the well-worn story of Moses and his journey from Prince of Egypt to Liberator of the Israelites. Skipping much of the stilted pageantry associated with his legend, the film opens on Moses (Bale) as already a man full grown. He’s the cousin and brother of heir apparent Rhamses (Joel Edgerton), but the preferred child of Rhamses’ father, the Pharaoh Seti (John Turturro). Thus, there is immediately friction between the lads long before Moses is revealed to actually be a Hebrew slave who was spared a monstrous fate when his mother and sister placed him in a basket on the river.

A threat to Rhamses’ legitimacy due to a pro-Moses military, and a downright loathsome irritation to Egyptian Queen Tuya (Sigourney Weaver), the young prince’s days in court would have likely been numbered, but the revelations from Nun (Ben Kingsley) certainly expedited matters. Exiled in the desert where he finds the love of a good woman (Maria Valverde), Moses also finds God. Literally. And the deity has quite the mission for this lifelong secularist now uncomfortably garbed in shepherd’s clothing.

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Much has been made in the press as of late about the mostly white cast of Exodus: Gods and Kings , and it is not entirely wrong to question if North Africa ever looked this WASPy. However, it’s also a story in which rivers turn to blood, and God commits mass infanticide during a 400-year period of Hebrew enslavement that has not a shred of historical evidence in all of Egypt. In other words, just go with it as a Bible story.

That is certainly Scott’s approach, as he utilizes all of his ancient world building extravagance from Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven to make his most action-packed and strangely light-hearted “Old Times” picture to date. Not feeling nearly as bound by creating a historical reality as those aforementioned films, Exodus: Gods and Kings has a definite allegorical intangibility to it wherein Scott is emboldened to unpack the relationship between Moses and Rhamses, and eventually Moses and God.

While the rest of the characters are thinly sketched at best, Moses and Rhamses’ struggle is always heartfelt, allowing Bale and Edgerton to provide some weight to the CGI opulence of man-eating crocodiles and hordes of locusts. The film is dedicated to Tony Scott, and somewhere in the picture, there is a more personal narrative that Scott likely wanted to explore about these two men that treat the Wrath of God as merely inconvenient weather when it comes time for a showdown.

However, the real strength of the movie comes from a very modern perspective on Moses. As the paterfamilias of religious saviors, it is odd to see Moses spend over an hour of the movie as essentially an atheist, doubting the Egyptian gods well before he continues doubting the Hebrew one—until he runs into a burning bush. Fitting the actor and director’s own sensibilities, this Moses is exhaustedly human, as well as very cynical of all spirituality until he becomes a growling, fiery, and even maniacal messenger for it.

Christian Bale, using his real accent, plays Moses like a tenured professor that was forced against his will to become the half-crazed pit preacher, screaming the end is nigh on the side of the Quad. It’s not scripture, but far more than all the CGI plagues, it’s riveting. And more importantly, it offers the film’s most interesting and soon-to-be controversial aspect: God is a 10-year-old child.

Moses meets God throughout the film in the face of a preadolescent boy whose tempestuous temper is scolded by the rapidly aging Bale. Their dynamic is thus a far more anti-authority Moses trying to argue with a child about why the murder of thousands of babes is cruel. This will undoubtedly enrage some of the faithful, but it certainly would explain a lot about the Old Testament’s God versus the New Testament counterpart. Perhaps puberty kicked in?

Less successful is Scott’s further attempt to “ground” Moses with an over reliance on his alluded militarism. Scott amusingly uses superior battlefield prowess as a reason for the Egyptian military’s initial reluctance to apprehend their former general (think Maximus and Commodus), but the result is far too many scenes of God’s Chosen People choosing to take bow and arrow to Egyptians in guerrilla tactics. Ironically, it’s more thrilling than anything in Scott’s Robin Hood misfire, but instead of enlivening Exodus’ pace with some undoubtedly studio mandated machismo, it slows the running time to a crawl until God puts on a show.

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One imagines that in another world, Scott and Bale would have loved to do the whole Moses movie like this—where the hero’s link to divinity is ambiguous at best and he wins the day by military cunning and fortuitous climate conditions. But doing that picture at this budget (and in this country) would be a miracle unto itself.

Overall, the pace is still relatively nimble in the expanse of Biblical Epics. While you feel every minute of Exodus’ regal 150 minutes, it is downright breezy when compared to the third act slog of Darren Aronofsky’s Noah , not to mention The Ten Commandments’ nigh four-hour sermon. Comparably, Exodus is succinct, perhaps too much so when one realizes that all the characters not named Moses or Rhamses amount to glorified cameos (Aaron Paul’s Joshua is more or less an extra), thanklessly reciting their pious and leaden dialogue.

Exodus: Gods and Kings is a dutiful retelling of Moses that’s up to modern special effects standards, and it finds a genuine humanity in Moses’ brotherly love, as well as his struggles of doubt with Boy God. As a result, 21 st century Moses avoids many of the pratfalls of DeMille’s laborious pageant. There are no entire hours listlessly devoted to Anne Baxter’s crocodile tears or the construction of a golden calf; Moses is played by a legitimate actor who finds a pulse to the marble statue (as opposed to being one); and, most of all, it doesn’t feel like you spent half a day getting slapped in the face by DeMille and his notorious casts of thousands with those precious stone tablets.

Still, for all of the amusing upgrades to this multiplex exodus, it never quite achieves the level of wide-eyed zealotry and obvious love for the material as seen in Chuck Heston decreeing, “Let my people go.” Even if Exodus: Gods and Kings is the better movie, it can never truly be the better movie. Coming down from the mountain with skepticism, Exodus ultimately leaves viewers as exactly that. But it does so in such grand style.

***This review was originally published on December 4, 2014.

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2.5 out of 5

David Crow | @DCrowsNest

David Crow is the movies editor at Den of Geek. He has long been proud of his geek credentials. Raised on cinema classics that ranged from…

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Exodus: gods and kings.

Common Sense Says
Parents Say 14 Reviews
Kids Say 25 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Moody Biblical battle epic about Moses is gory and dull.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 14+?

Heavy fantasy-style action violence. Gruesome "seven plagues," with st

A married couple kisses; sex is indicated.

The pharaoh appears to drink wine with his meals.

Any Positive Content?

Moses is usually a clear hero, but in this version he seems uneasy with God'

Moses overcomes enormous challenges, solves problems, and learns empathy. But so

Violence & Scariness

Heavy fantasy-style action violence. Gruesome "seven plagues," with strong terror, blood, death, destruction, and chaos. Fighting. Lots of blood and death. Dead children. Dead bodies. Bird entrails. Dead horses. Slave whipping. Several people hanged. Falling from cliff. Tidal wave and drowning.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

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Positive Role Models

Moses is usually a clear hero, but in this version he seems uneasy with God's help, and the use of the seven plagues seems rather gruesome. (You almost feel sorry for the bad guys.) He can also be violent and sullen and quarrelsome. Still, he's heroic enough to rescue hundreds of thousands of slaves and bring them a new life and new freedom.

Positive Messages

Moses overcomes enormous challenges, solves problems, and learns empathy. But some of the messages get muddled/conflicted in the movie's action sequences and because of parts of the story that were cut out.

Parents need to know that Exodus: Gods and Kings is an epic retelling of the Biblical story of Moses freeing the Jewish slaves from the evil Egyptian pharaohs. There's lots of gruesome violence, particularly in the depiction of the seven plagues, with shocking amounts of blood, death, destruction, chaos, and terror. Dead children and animals are seen. There's also lots of fighting, hangings, slaves being whipped, and a terrifying tidal wave. On the other hand, sex and drinking/drugs are minimal, and language and consumerism aren't an issue. The film has drawn some criticism for "whitewashing" history by casting Caucasian actors in the roles of Middle Eastern characters. Teens who are on the fence about seeing a Biblical epic may be swayed by the movie's action factor, and Moses' story is still there -- and still worth telling and discussing, even though he's not portrayed as a saintly hero. But kids and tweens are strongly warned away; stick with either The Ten Commandments or The Prince of Egypt instead. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parent and Kid Reviews

Parents say (14)
Kids say (25)

Based on 14 parent reviews

Just typical violence

This is the best movie in that decade, what's the story.

As kids, Moses and Rhamses grew up together in the palace of Rhamses' father ( John Turturro ). As adults, Rhamses ( Joel Edgerton ) rules Egypt, with Moses ( Christian Bale ) as his trusted counsel. While inspecting a division of Jewish slaves, a wise man ( Ben Kingsley ) informs Moses that he, too, is Jewish. When Rhamses finds out, Moses is banished. He meets and marries Sefora (Maria Valverde) and starts life anew ... until God contacts him (in the form of a boy) and tells him that he must free the 600,000 people enslaved under the pharaoh. God assists by sending seven deadly plagues, but then Moses must lead the people across the Red Sea and into the promised land.

Is It Any Good?

EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS has a somber, dreary quality, punctuated by a thrumming, droning music score. Director Ridley Scott has made some great films, but he seems drawn to huge battle epics, like Kingdom of Heaven and Robin Hood , which he doesn't seem particularly suited to. The mood of this film doesn't invite anything in the way of an emotional or spiritual connection.

Nor does it allow many of the actors much of anything to do. Bale is both serious and battle-ready, and several other recognizable actors appear as window dressing. Only Edgerton as Rhamses brings a little heart to his under-confident villain. Some choices, such as God appearing as a creepy kid, are simply strange. Only the plagues sequence offers a kind of distraction, but even that quickly turns disturbingly dark. Earlier Moses films ( The Ten Commandments , The Prince of Egypt , etc.) were at least campy or funny, but this one isn't even entertaining.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Exodus: Gods and Kings ' violence , especially during the "seven plagues" sequence. Does the movie go too far, or is this violence necessary to convey the movie's story and themes?

Is Moses a hero in this story? What does he achieve? What does he learn? Is he a role model ?

What's the appeal of Biblical epics like this one? What is the Moses story about, ultimately?

Why do you think the filmmakers choose to show God as a child? Is God fair? Wise? Cruel? What is his motivation in freeing the slaves?

Movie Details

In theaters : December 12, 2014
On DVD or streaming : March 17, 2015
Cast : Christian Bale , Joel Edgerton , Ben Kingsley
Director : Ridley Scott
Inclusion Information : Indian/South Asian actors
Studio : Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Genre : Action/Adventure
Topics : History
Run time : 150 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : violence including battle sequences and intense images
Last updated : May 18, 2024

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Movie review: ‘Exodus: Gods and Kings’

(Rated PG [Canada] and PG-13 [MPAA] for violence, including battle sequences and intense images; directed by Ridley Scott; stars Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, Isaac Andrews, John Turturro, Ben Mendelsohn, Ben Kingsley, Maria Valverde; run time: 150 minutes.)

Wrestling with God and Scripture

By Ted Giese

Darren Aronofsky’s “Noah” (2013) was an opinionated film chock full of dark, cryptic, extra-biblical mysticism and environmentalist concerns often feeling like propaganda for something. Ridley Scott’s “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” on the whole, is a much different film. His sword-and-sandal epic is surprisingly restrained, subdued and filled with a genuine wrestling with the biblical story of Moses. It is a reflection of Scott as a recovering atheist who is agnostically struggling with materialism and the possibility of the Divine.

Christian Bale portrays Moses in the new Ridley Scott film, “Exodus: Gods and Kings.”

At first blush, the film seems to rest on the razor’s edge of mystery and coincidence; however, in the end, God wins. The key challenge presented by the film rests in the adage, “He cannot see the forest for the trees.” In Scott’s case, it appears he’s had a good glimpse of the “forest,” but it’s often the biblical details — the “trees” in the Exodus account — that suffer.

“Exodus: Gods and Kings” provides no sweeping prologue. Rather, it opts to jump into the story of Moses (Christian Bale) as a grown man clearly instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, mighty in his words and deeds (Acts 7:22). He is an Egyptian general beloved by the Pharaoh Seti (John Turturro), and he is the close confidant of the Pharaoh’s son, Ramses (Joel Edgerton). Even though Moses is not one of Pharaoh’s sons, Seti treats him as one and even privately favors Moses over Ramses, who he sees as poorly suited for leadership.

Early in the film, before the Battle of Kadesh, Seti gives both men a sword with their names engraved on them, giving Moses’ sword to Ramses and Ramses’ sword to Moses, charging them to look after each other. The relationship between the two men becomes one of the major driving forces in the unfolding narrative as the director tells his story of God rescuing the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery. Scott’s foreshadowing in the first act of the film employs dramatic irony to great effect, thoughtfully setting up the tragic future demise of the brotherly relationship between Moses and Ramses.

Details, details

When screenwriters sit down to pen a movie about Moses and the Exodus, this brotherly relationship is an oft-repeated Hollywood theme. While it’s found in popular adaptations like Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments” (1956) and DreamWorks’ “The Prince of Egypt” (1998), it’s really a speculative invention. Scripture doesn’t name Moses’ adoptive Egyptian mother or her father, the Pharaoh. Nor does it name the Pharaoh to whom Moses eventually returns some 40 years after his flight to Midian. In fact, Scripture is silent both as to Moses’ family situation while growing up in Egypt and what impact it had, if any, on his returning to Egypt.

Scott, like other filmmakers before him, includes this for dramatic purposes, but scripturally speaking it is a theme not explored in the Bible. However, the Book of Genesis does record other brotherly conflicts — Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers — which makes it a recurring biblical theme.

In other moments, “Exodus: Gods and Kings” seems to import biblical themes and character traits for dramatic effect. For example, Scott’s depiction of Moses contains echoes of Abraham (Gen. 18:22-33) and of Jacob, particularly in their personal wrestling with God in times of trial and danger.

At one point, a corrupt Egyptian official (Ben Mendelsohn) complains about the Hebrew slaves, saying that even their name is combative. He notes that Israel means “he who fights with God,” to which Moses responds, “No, it means to wrestle with God.” This thread ties Scott’s Moses back to the patriarch Jacob, whose name God changed to “Israel” after Jacob literally wrestled with Him (Gen. 32:22-32).

Details, details, details

Moses, while instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, is shown as “areligious” — a man who knows about the religious beliefs of the Egyptians and of the Hebrew slaves, whom he’s destined to save, but who doesn’t believe in any of them. Rather, Moses values the modern virtue of “believing in yourself.” This changes after he suffers an accident on the side of a mountain while shepherding a flock of sheep. In the accident, Moses acquires a head injury and, from that point, he sees a messenger of God in the form of a young shepherd boy (Isaac Andrews). It’s important to remember that Scripture doesn’t attribute Moses’ relationship with God to a head injury!

Is there a burning bush in Scott’s film? Yes, but Scott’s Moses receives no staff from God with which to work wonders, and no clear direction of exactly what he is expected to do upon returning to Egypt. The burning-bush scene, a seminal scene in the movie, contains the largest number of departures from the biblical narrative. The burning-bush encounter in DreamWorks’ “The Prince of Egypt” has a higher degree of biblical fidelity, while still allowing for some rather successful artistic interpretation of the text.

Some viewers may mistake the mysterious shepherd boy for God, but Scott envisions him as a messenger intended to be a sort of angel God uses to speak directly to Moses and whom Moses alone can see. Moses’ relationship to this messenger begins in fear, moves to antagonism, and eventually appears to be one of camaraderie. This eventually affable relationship may draw to mind Exodus 33:1, which says, “The Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend,” or Abraham’s interaction with the Lord at the beginning of Genesis, Chapter 18.

This approach to Moses’ relationship with God through a mediating angel also may explain some of Christian Bales’ comments about the character of Moses he plays. Prior to the film’s release, Bale said, “I think [Moses] was likely schizophrenic.” While it certainly sounds as though Bale is speaking of his character’s motivations from a purely materialistic modern viewpoint, filmgoers will want to ask, “What does the film, on the whole, end up saying?”

Viewed as a whole, it becomes apparent the events unfolding in the film can’t be explained by one man’s delusion. For example, Scott depicts the ninth plague (darkness) and the 10 th plague (death of the Egyptian first-born and sparing the Israelite first-born) as events with no naturalistic explanation.

Details, details, details, details

When Moses returns to Egypt and Pharaoh refuses to let the Hebrew slaves go, all 10 plagues are shown in vivid detail. However, while he wrestles with how to depict this, Scott often provides an initial materialist explanation: The blood in the Nile begins with an onslaught of crocodiles, which the Egyptians blame for setting off a chain reaction of terrible plagues. That said, what is clear is that the Nile River, which the Egyptians worship as a source of life, becomes, by the hand of the Hebrew God, a fountain of death to the embarrassment of Pharaoh and his advisers and the “gods” they serve, who are proven to be mere idols. Scripturally speaking, the Egyptian magicians recognize “the finger of God” at work (Ex. 8:18-19), while in the film they, and the rest of Pharaoh’s advisers, remain in denial.

A careful look at this part of the film provides this insight: Scott has made the plagues into a series of events in which God works through means. There is real blood in the water, real flies, frogs and boils. None of it is “spiritualized,” and by the end of the plagues, it’s clear God is in command of it all. In fact, when Moses first returns, Scott has him trying to rescue the people by guerrilla warfare echoing the sentiments of Acts 7, where Scripture says Moses “supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not understand” (Acts 7:25). In Scott’s film, Moses learns this lesson alongside the people: Their rescue would ultimately come from the hand of God, not by human ingenuity, persuasion or unguided, random-naturalistic coincidence.

If viewers want to look for discrepancies with Scripture, the list goes on and on. For instance, Moses doesn’t spend 40 years away from Egypt, and Moses’ wife, Zipporah (Maria Valverde), and their son, Gershom, don’t accompany him back to Egypt. As a result, Moses doesn’t appear to be 80 years old when he returns. To identify the Pharaoh as Ramses II, Scott places the narrative on the backdrop of the 13th century B.C., which conflicts with the traditional date of the 15th century B.C., an earlier date arrived at by internal biblical evidence.

What are Christians to make of this film?

The film is essentially Ridley Scott’s character study of Moses — a man moving reluctantly from being areligious to becoming a man of faith. In the film’s first act, Joshua’s father, Nun (Ben Kingsley), asks Moses, “Do you believe in coincidence?,” to which Moses answers, “As much as I believe in anything else.” Nun replies, “I don’t believe in coincidence.”

God in Scott’s film is initially rationalized away as a powerful and compelling delusion. However, at the film’s apex, the death of the Egyptian first-born, Scott presents God as a divine being completely outside Moses, something beyond what Moses could conjure up in his mind as the result of a head injury. In one of the film’s most powerful moments, both Ramses and Moses recognize there was no coincidence in the fact that none of the Israelite children died in the last plague, and God was diligently rescuing Israel, His “first-born son,” out of slavery (Ex. 4:21-23). In spite of all the film’s adjustments to the biblical account, the fact that Scott so powerfully and faithfully depicts this crucial part of the scriptural narrative can be applauded. It is also telling of his personal move from outspoken atheism to open agnosticism.

To put the best construction on the film and its production, Scott seems to be “a bruised reed” by the banks of the Nile River, and while the film doesn’t burn with the light of a pillar of fire by night (Ex. 13:21), the “faintly burning wick” (Is. 42:3) of hope Scott presents requires some thoughtful consideration by Christian viewers, who may want to think about the people in their own lives who are precariously beginning to seek God where He may be found. In this case, in making “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” Scott grasped hold of the Lord and wrestled with Him. Pray this wrestling match will be as successful for Scott as it was for the Old Testament patriarch Jacob.

In an interview with Variety , Scott said, “I always try to place myself in the position of the central character, and try to come at it from my own logic.” Moses, like Jacob, “wrestled” with God, and it appears Scott in making this film has made a genuine attempt to “walk a mile” in their sandals.

In the end, with its many deviations from Scripture, Scott’s “Exodus: Gods and Kings” can’t be recommended as a “devotional” film. It is, however, a superior film to Aronofsky’s “Noah” and may serve as fertile ground for conversing with others about the nature of faith, God and redemption.

If the plan is to sit down together as a family to watch a movie about the Exodus, the best bets may still be DreamWorks’ “The Prince of Egypt” or Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments.” Be warned, however: These films also take liberty with the Scriptural text and likewise indulge in creative licence. For a true encounter with Moses and God’s liberation of the children of Israel from their slavery in Egypt, read the biblical book of Exodus; the Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 7; and Hebrews, Chapter 11.

As always, when watching any of these films, it is recommended to go back to read again what Scripture teaches and not take what the film presents as “gospel truth” regardless how beloved the film may be personally or by the culture at-large.

The Rev. Ted Giese is associate pastor of Mount Olive Lutheran Church, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada; a contributor to “Reformation Rush Hour” on KFUO-AM Radio, The Canadian Lutheran and Reporter; and movie reviewer for the “Issues, Etc.” radio program. Follow Giese on Twitter: @RevTedGiese .

Posted Dec. 19, 2014

Contributing Writer

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Thank you for your Exodus review, it had some helpful insights, much appreciated. Would love your thoughts on this exposé of the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqOX-UjrLL4

Ted, you hit yet another movie review out of the park. I was incredibly disappointed in this movie. I did not in any expect Hollywood to “get it right” but was shocked at just how incredibly wrong they got the account of Moses.

Peter Jackson labored for years doing his very best to be faithful to Tolkien’s text and vision in LORD OF THE RINGS….you’d think Scott would have least got the basic facts correct.

Instead what we have in this movie is a Moses who is a delusional terrorist and a “God” who is portrayed as having an eight year old psychotic child as his mouthpiece.

Pastor Giese, thanks for the review and critique. I was planning to see the movie, but I’m glad you shared your perspectives, which give me some ideas on how to think about and talk to others about the movie. Ridley Scott’s brother recently committed suicide–what impact do you think that had on the filmmaker’s faith journey? As one of the disturbing departures from the biblical account, Scott has said that because of “name recognition” there are no notable actors of comparable ethnicity to the geographical context of this movie’s theme (e.g. Zipporah, Egyptians). Since Hollywood has noticed that Christians pay to see movies with biblical themes, how are we to reconcile our biblical account with this blatant subjection to secular marketing? Blessed Advent!

The Ten Commandments Has 15 in the movie that are not found in the Bible

According to the commentary on the 2004 DVD release of the film, the movie’s script was enhanced by non-biblical sources, such as: Josephus, the Sepher-ha-Yashar, the Chronicle of Moses and the Quran. Also, some parts in the script are mere inventions.

If you’re expecting a scene-by-scene visual rendering of the biblical account of Exodus, remember that the studio is a Hollywood entertainment company, not a religious broadcaster.

Me and my wife went to see this movie on Christmas and we were disappointed. If you make a movie called Exodus then it should be documented to what is in the Bible in Exodus. The Bible states that you shouldn’t take away from the word and this movie did by Christian Bale using a sword instead of a staff to part the sea to the Israelites walking through a low tide sea instead of dry land.

I thought the film’s boy was God, because when Moses asked him who he is in the dream/vision, the boy said “I AM”

I would agree with everyone’s opinion of this movie. However, one thing I want to point out is that there seems to be an underline meaning in a certain part of the movie. When you read the book of Exodus, you see many times where Moses asks God a question and he immediately receives an answer. However, in the movie, we see that God does not directly answer Moses when he has to decide which direction to go, nor does he directly answer Moses when Moses is at the Red Sea. I think this part of the film is to show what it’s like today. When we are faced with an issue, we constantly ask God to show us the way. Of course, we are not always directly answered, but we just keep pushing forward day by day trusting God, and eventually we reach where God wants us to be. I think this is what the writer is trying to portray in this section of the film.

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If You Can Wade Through the Dreadful First Hour of Exodus , Old-Fashioned Spectacle Awaits

Exodus: Gods and Kings is as uneven as Ridley Scott’s career; at times, it seems to be a journey through the director’s greatest strengths and weaknesses. The good news is that his strengths eventually win out; the bad news is all the awkward storytelling and botched character interactions we have to wade through to get to the good stuff. Once we do, though, Exodus is a hoot.

The Moses tale is familiar to pretty much everybody, but leave it to Scott, who has always favored mood and imagery over narrative and character, to mess up the initial story beats. We begin with Moses (Christian Bale) and his adoptive brother Ramses (Joel Edgerton) preparing to attack the army of the Hittites. On the eve of battle, their father, the current pharaoh (John Turturro, resisting the urge to yell, “ It don’t mattah to Jeezus! ”), learns of a prophecy that says that someone will save someone’s life, and that the person who did the saving will become king. That’s about as vague as a prophecy can get, but it’s enough to send Ramses spiraling into paranoia as soon as Moses saves him during the bloody melee with the Hittites.

Despite that setup, Scott and his cavalcade of screenwriters never quite crack Ramses’ motivations. He’s suspicious, yet supposedly torn by his affection for Moses, even though we rarely sense said affection. They also can’t quite crack Moses’ awakening to his Jewish heritage. He initially hears of it in the town of Pithom from Nun (Ben Kingsley), an enslaved Israelite and father of the rebel Joshua (an eerily underused Aaron Paul), but he doesn’t believe it. However, the abject conditions of the Hebrew slaves in Pithom do get Moses’ blood boiling, and for a while, the film tries to juggle our hero’s skepticism about his lineage with his disillusionment over the way things are being run; but the results are more convoluted than nuanced. In truth, the stodginess of these early scenes almost consume the entire film; I spent much of this first hour alternately confused, sleepy, and bewildered at how low the great Ridley Scott seemed to have fallen.

And then, God shows up.

Here he comes to Moses in the form of a young boy, Malak (Isaac Andrews). Their interactions are curious, almost hostile, as Malak pushes Moses toward greater extremism in his effort to free the Jews from enslavement. Moses stands up to Malak and even expresses disagreement with the deity’s ruthless tactics. Their exchanges at times feel like a debate between equals, and God even suggests that Moses is free to leave whenever he wants.

Much has been made of the fact that Ridley Scott himself is a nonbeliever, but that shouldn’t really surprise anybody. Two of the greatest Christ movies (Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel According to Matthew and Roberto Rossellini’s The Messiah ) came from atheists, and as my pal Steven Greydanus, film critic for the National Catholic Register , has argued , some of the best religious films have been made by nonbelievers. Maybe it’s because skeptical filmmakers have to convince themselves, too, along with their imagined viewers. Even the most familiar story starts from zero in its retelling and weaves its world anew.

Once Moses has his mission, Exodus comes breathtakingly alive. As the plagues descend upon Egypt, Scott lets loose a carnival of horrors, each building on the previous one. Armies of crocodiles swarm the Nile, feasting on each other, which turns the water red with blood, which then pushes frogs out of the river and spreads flies and disease. It’s spectacular, terrifying, visceral stuff, but it doesn’t deny the Egyptians their humanity, either: The plagues don’t discriminate between bad royalty and innocent commoners.

That leads to the exodus part of Exodus , as Moses leads the Jews out of Egypt with Ramses in pursuit. The rockslides and waves and thundering armies are eye-poppingly impressive, and the film finally becomes what it’s been trying to be all along: the first honest-to-goodness biblical epic since the days of Cecil B. De Mille and George Stevens. (Let’s not miss, however, the irony that such traditionalism is being delivered to us by Ridley Scott, who once seemed the most modern of directors.)

That spirit of old-fashioned spectacle — corny, earnest, indulgent, insistent, kitschy — is probably the best way to approach Exodus . It’s also the best way to approach some of the frustratingly lily-white casting choices. Yes, it’s probably true that Scott needed someone like Christian Bale to make sure he could get his film made. And casting a Middle Eastern actor — a “Mohammed so-and-so from such-and-such,” in the director’s immortally tin-eared phrasing — as Ramses the bad guy might have been dubious in our politically sensitive times. But, speaking as a bit of a “Mohammed-so-and-so” myself, I’m not sure Joel Edgerton cavorting around in orangeface is any less offensive.

That said, Scott has at least loaded up part of his supporting cast with more diverse faces, including the Iraqi-Danish actor Dar Salim, the Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani (the riveting lead of Ashghar Farhadi’s About Elly , and the love interest in Scott’s Body of Lies ), the Egyptian actor Ghassan Massoud (who memorably played Saladin in Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven ), and the Indian-British actress Indira Varma ( Luther , Kama Sutra ). Maybe in the inevitable director’s extended edition, they’ll actually have some real lines.

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Exodus: Gods And Kings Review

26 Dec 2014

150 minutes

Exodus: Gods And Kings

The Bible shows us God can talk through killing or through allowing his son to be killed. It’s the weird, confusing and sometimes wonderful contrast between the Old and New Testaments. The achievement of Ridley Scott’s take on the most famous story of exile, imprisonment and escape is not that it solves that apparent contradiction – that would be a miracle – but that it lives in it. This is a film that poses more questions than it answers. Where does faith become fanaticism? When does freedom fighting become terrorism? Why does God work through people, or people pretend to be Gods? All that, and shit gets blown up. Well, okay, not quite: people are devoured, sliced and starved in wide-screen spectacle. Oh and, yes – spoiler alert, if you didn’t pay attention in Sunday School – children are killed in their sleep.

Scott has DeMillions to mount the ten plagues and eclipses Cecil’s Ten Commandments with aplomb and invention. The script by Adam Cooper & Bill Collage, Jeffrey Caine and Steven Zaillian brightly attempts to rationalise the horrors that befall the Egyptian people, before leading us along with Moses to realise the answer may be in how God identifies himself: “I Am”.

If you ignore the scale, splendour and slaughter – for a moment – then the biblical pic this bears most comparison to is not those afternoon-long ’50s costume parties, but The Last Temptation Of Christ. Like Scorsese’s heartfelt, fascinating film – too readily dismissed by some Christians as heretical – Exodus: Gods And Kings has a lead who’s not sure if he’s the messiah or just a very naughty boy. Is he mad or bad or from God? Bale, here, is perfect casting, at war with himself as much as he is with Egypt. You feel that tension throughout his performance and throughout the film. It’s a Bible epic that isn’t sure that God exists, and isn’t sure he’s benevolent. But it is also a film that wants, in its heart, to believe.

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DVD & Streaming

Exodus: Gods and Kings

Action/Adventure , Drama , War

Content Caution

In Theaters

December 12, 2014
Christian Bale as Moses; Joel Edgerton as Ramses; Aaron Paul as Joshua; John Turturro as Seti; Maria Valverde as Zipporah; Isaac Andrews as Malak; Ben Kingsley as Nun, Sigourney Weaver as Tuya

Home Release Date

March 17, 2015
Ridley Scott

Distributor

20th Century Fox

Movie Review

The gods? Pish. Moses can do without ’em.

In the ancient Egypt reconstructed here by famed film director Ridley Scott—where rivers, rocks and rising suns all have their own personal deities, where the pharaoh Seti scrutinizes animal organs for omens—Moses puts his faith in himself and his own strong right arm. As one of Seti’s most trusted generals, he knows full well the challenges facing this riverfront empire: Neither Amun nor Osiris nor any other deity is going to save the Egyptian people from the Hittites. Moses and his princely stepbrother, Ramses, at the front of the Egyptian army, stand a better chance of protecting the kingdom than a handful of goose guts.

So when a priestess uncovers an omen in some entrails—that in an upcoming battle a leader will be saved, and the savior will lead—Moses shrugs it off. And even when he does rescue Ramses from impending doom, he takes pains to minimize it. Prophecy, schmophecy.

Not Ramses, though. Even though the prince loves Moses like the brother he grows up to be, the foretelling now makes him a foe. And when Ramses hears rumors that Moses might not be Egyptian at all—that he could be, of all things, a Hebrew , one of those who were enslaved by the Egyptians 400 years earlier—Ramses knows that Moses will have to go.

Ridley’s Ramses exiles Moses to the wastelands beyond the Nile, where Moses eventually finds Jethro and his fair daughters in the land of Midian. There, he finds a wife (Zipporah), a new life (as a shepherd) … and a new God to deal with. Moses’ own son points to a mountain and tells him that it’s sacred. “God’s mountain,” he says. And when Moses hesitates to accept, Zipporah chastises him for confusing the child.

“Is it good for a boy to grow up believing in nothing?” She asks him.

“Is it bad to grow up believing in yourself?” Moses retorts.

But when a few sheep scamper up this sacred hill and Moses runs after them, something happens to shake his agnosticism. He gets knocked around and knocked out by a landslide. And when he comes to, he sees a burning bush. Beside it, a child—a child who talks as no child should.

“Who are you?” Moses asks.

“I Am,” the child tells him.

Moses told himself that he wanted nothing to do with all those gods. But it seems that God may want something to do with him.

Positive Elements

Exodus: Gods and Kings is, of course, based (sometimes quite loosely) on the biblical book of Exodus. It’s the foundational journal of the Jews in many respects, and a broadly inspirational one as well—a story of a people striving for freedom. Some of that shines through in this screenplay.

At first, Moses is a reluctant shepherd for his people. For much of the movie, he sees himself as Egyptian. He hates the idea of leaving his wife and son behind when he goes back to Egypt to retrieve his Hebrews. But go he does—demanding freedom for a people he barely knows from a government he actually quite likes. Even as God spares His people from most of the plagues, Moses suffers. We see it in his face when he hears the Egyptians grieve over their lost children, hear it in his voice when he speaks to Ramses. He’s not a prophet without a heart … but he is one who’s determined to see his job through to the end.

We see a great deal of strength in the Hebrew people as well. They’ve waited a very long time for their deliverance, and they’re willing to sacrifice a great deal to see it through. Miriam, Moses’ sister, refuses to fess up about Moses’ secret lineage, for instance, and she nearly has her hand chopped off for her trouble. (Moses winds up saving her—admitting to being Hebrew even if he doesn’t yet believe it himself.) And when Moses returns from exile and hides among the Hebrews, they refuse to give him up—even as Ramses hangs whole families to “encourage” informants.

Ramses, though, is not without virtue. As a prince, he clearly loved Moses. As king, he exiles Moses instead of executing him, and even arranges for him to keep his sword. Ramses also dearly loves his son, cradling him and doting on him in life. He’s nearly torn asunder by grief when the boy dies.

Spiritual Elements

God is obviously a big part of the Exodus story. And while Ridley Scott doesn’t make Him central here, to both his credit and detriment the director does give Him screen time.

The mysterious boy Moses talks to by the burning bush is called (in the credits) Malak, a Semitic word for angel . And Moses himself calls the child a messenger at one point. But he clearly represents someone much, much bigger. He either is God or he speaks directly for Him, calling Moses to his sacred work and triggering the plagues as well. This God is powerful … but is shown to act like a petulant, willful child. Ramses is horrified that the Hebrews would worship a God who kills children, and Moses expresses his own moments of doubt and horror too.

Because of all that, it’s easy to see a tinge of the Gnostic concept of the Demiurge at play in this lad who would be God. (Gnosticism encompasses multiple heretical deviations from Christianity. Tendrils of it hold that the Bible is really the story of two gods—one the essentially unknowable and most-high God of the New Testament, and the other a lesser, more vindictive god of the Old Testament.)

Scott also leaves open the possibility that God is a figment of Moses’ imagination—a hallucination brought on by the rock that hit his head. No one but Moses can see Him, of course. And when the plagues are in full force, Ramses’ advisors suggest they might all be the result of naturalistic causes. Even the parting of the Red Sea feels more like a weird-but-still-natural anomaly, especially at first, than a supernatural event.

Elsewhere, a priestess cuts open a bird and scans its entrails for a sign. She appeals to her gods to cleanse the blood-red Nile to no avail. She mentions petitioning a number of gods for relief. Seti is obsessed with supernatural signs. And Ramses, who initially shares Moses’ skepticism, prays to idols, touching them tentatively. A rendition of a battle insists that he was saved “only through the help of the gods.” We see a golden calf idol at a distance.

Sexual & Romantic Content

Moses and Zipporah get married. Once alone, they kiss, exchange sweet nothings and Zipporah invites him to “proceed.” He takes off only her veil before the camera retreats. We see the same sort of scene essentially repeated many years later. A woman wears a tummy-baring top.

Violent Content

Battles. Plagues. Drownings. This movie suffers from its share of death and destruction.

Egypt’s horrors open with a plague of crocodiles who bloodily chomp on several fishermen and one another as well, turning the water red (by way of blood and, according to the pharaoh’s naturalistic explanation, stirring the Nile’s red silt). This affliction results in lots and lots of dead fish. Frogs and flies follow. (We see a screaming man suck in a mouthful of flies.) People get hit with huge (but not flaming) hailstones. Then Egyptians are covered in ooky sores. (Servants remove a bloody bandage from the queen’s back.) Animals die, with more blood spilling. The final plague is not so flashy, but it’s deeply chilling: We watch children breathe deeply in their sound sleep and then, suddenly, stop—their corpses cradled by grieving parents.

On the battle field, men are killed via sword, ax and arrow. Hundreds of soldiers, horses and chariots grotesquely tumble down a mountain as the pass crumbles beneath them. A man is gruesomely run over by a chariot. Flaming arrows find their way to fishing vessels, setting them and the people inside on fire. People are dragged out of their homes, beaten, whipped and hanged (or otherwise slaughtered). Buildings and vineyards are burned.

The sea comes crashing down on the bulk of the Egyptian army, drowning nearly everyone.

Moses kills a Hebrew overseer, seriously wounds another and stabs two would-be assassins. He himself is hit in the head with a rock, and his leg boasts a nasty, bloody fracture.

The Hebrews paint their door frames with the blood of sacrificed lambs.

Crude or Profane Language

Drug & alcohol content.

Ramses milks venom from a cobra, apparently with the intention of drinking it. “A little venom in your blood is a good thing,” he tells Moses. “Makes you less vulnerable to the next poisonous bite.” Ramses seems to be a bit inebriated when he nearly chops off someone’s hand. Moses takes a sip, too.

Other Noteworthy Elements

After Moses has his first meeting with God, Zipporah—a woman of deep faith—tells him he’s imagining things.

“How do you know?” Moses asks.

“Because God is not a boy.”

This short sequence takes place 1,300 years before the birth of Jesus—when God, obviously, became a boy. That comparison won’t lessen the troublesomeness of seeing the Great I Am cast as 11-year-old Isaac Andrews.

But it’s not how God looks that’s the most troubling thing: It’s how He acts in Exodus: Gods and Kings .

In fairness, the original Exodus story is challenging to our modern and postmodern sensibilities of equality and human rights. It’s undeniably hard to read about the killing of Egypt’s first born and not feel a twinge of grief. But Scott’s God approaches the plagues with either the dispassion of a grim accountant or the anger of a boy who feels wronged. There’s no hint of sadness or love. And because Scott chose to portray Him as a boy, moviegoers may want to respond by sending the tyke to a timeout.

Which, given Scott’s outspoken anti-religion leanings, might be exactly what the director had in mind.

“The biggest source of evil is of course religion,” he told Esquire in 2012. When the interviewer pressed him on the point, Scott said, “Can you think of a good one? A just and kind and tolerant religion?”

Not in this movie.

Is the God Scott gives us “the God of compassion and mercy”? Rarely. “Slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness”? Hardly. And we haven’t even begun to talk about the plot-point deviations Scott’s Exodus takes when compared to the original text. Moses? Well, he’s far more tortured terrorist than booming Charlton Heston here. Actor Christian Bale said of his character, “I think the man was likely schizophrenic and was one of the most barbaric individuals that I ever read about in my life. … He was a very troubled, tumultuous man and mercurial. But the biggest surprise was the nature of God. He was equally very mercurial.”

Not everything takes the first exit ramp off the scriptural account, though. And the resulting combination of fact and artistic license can create some pretty robust conversations about what the Bible really does say about Moses and his mission of liberation. It’s an optimistic view that’s bolstered by us seeing that the shed blood of the Passover lamb—a foreshadowing of Christ’s awesome work on the cross so many centuries later—still protects the Israelites in this tale. And Moses does indeed begin his own personal transformation when he’s called, and he does indeed fulfill God’s directive on his life, whether he really wants to or not.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Want to understand American views on Israel? Take a look at this 1958 novel.

Leon Uris’s bestselling epic Exodus — and its hit movie adaptation starring Paul Newman — influenced generations of Americans, from the suburbs to the State Department.

by Marjorie Ingall

Paul Newman from the 1960 movie Exodus superimposed over the cover of Leon Uris’s novel Exodus repeating in the background.

When I was 12 or 13, I found a copy of Leon Uris’s 1958 novel Exodus in my synagogue’s library. I stood amid the shelves, surreptitiously reading a sex scene (did the book just fall open right to it, the way every copy of Judy Blume’s Forever did at Chapter 12?) in which the passionate, long-legged, redheaded Jordana Ben Canaan makes love to her cerebral military strategist boyfriend, David Ben Ami, in the ruins of a Crusader castle on Mount Tabor in 1947 Palestine. As they canoodle, they recite King Solomon’s Song of Songs to each other. Uris uses ellipses ecstatically. (“And he kissed her breast … ‘ Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies …’ And he kissed her lips … ‘And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine for my beloved, that goeth down sweetly’ …”) I was scandalized .

I took the book home and devoured it, much the way David devoured Jordana.

Exodus not only titillated me but also filled me with youthful pride. It’s difficult to overstate what a phenomenon the novel — a sweeping story about the founding of the modern state of Israel — was, even in the early ’80s, when it was already more than two decades old. It was over 600 pages long, structured in “five books” (you know, like the Hebrew Bible), touching on the exile of Jews from the Holy Land, the terrors of life in the Pale of Settlement in Russia and Eastern Europe, and the horrors of the Holocaust. Mostly, though, it focused on a handful of Jewish characters, plus one foxy blond Presbyterian American nurse, in 1947 and 1948.

If you walked into a Jewish living room when I was a kid (or today, if you have a grandparent of a certain age), you’d spot it on a shelf. The hardcover edition dominated bestseller lists for months; it was translated into over 50 languages. When the paperback came out in September 1959, it had the largest advance purchase order — a million and a half copies — of any novel in publishing history. It presaged a glut of massive, sweeping national epics by the likes of James Michener, John Jakes, and James Clavell. And in 1960, it became a blockbuster movie starring Paul Newman as hottie Jewish freedom fighter Ari Ben Canaan.

A shirtless Paul Newman in shorts smoking and leaning on a chair. He is wearing a chain necklace with a Star of David charm.

From the start, Exodus hugely influenced the world’s perception of Israel. “It’s been said that the only other book that had as great an impact on American foreign policy was Pearl Buck’s novel about China ,” said Riv-Ellen Prell, professor of American studies at the University of Minnesota and author of Fighting to Become Americans: Jews, Gender, and the Anxiety of Assimilation . “The book wasn’t just a driver of Jewish identity. People in the notoriously antisemitic state department read it at every level.”

In Our Exodus: Leon Uris and the Americanization of Israel’s Founding Story , Israeli college professor and historian M.M. Silver notes that the book was a gift to Israel’s tourist industry. “More tourists fly into Tel Aviv with Exodus than with the Bible,” said the director of the Israeli government’s tourist office in 1959. David Ben-Gurion, the country’s first prime minister, reportedly proclaimed, “I don’t usually read novels. But I read that one. As a literary work, it isn’t much. But as a piece of propaganda, it’s the greatest thing ever written about Israel.” Production images from the Otto Preminger film, featuring a shirtless Paul Newman wearing a Star of David necklace, only increased the story’s allure.

The book seemed to fit right in with the vision of Israel my parents provided for me. I grew up listening to Israeli folk records and hearing about the kibbutz movement, in which no one owned property and everyone tilled the land together and worked to make the desert bloom. I was taken to the Sinai desert, where my family camped with Bedouins and looked at the stars; I saw the mountain in the Galilee that would later feature in my bat mitzvah haftarah , where the prophet Deborah led the Israelites into battle against the Canaanites. Israel seemed like the happy almost-ending to the story of Jewish history. There’s a joke that the meaning of every Jewish holiday is “They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat.” Jaffa oranges and creamy feta seemed like our delicious due for surviving the Holocaust.

When my parents were growing up, Jewish American identity was in transition. The Holocaust was a shattering collective experience, not only because of the deaths of 6 million Jews but also because it reminded American Jews that they were only guests in their own country. They knew about the draconian immigration quotas in America and elsewhere. No one wanted refugee Jews. Then, suddenly, the newly established state of Israel provided what seemed like a true haven.

The postwar period was also when American Jews were starting to join the middle class in greater numbers, leaving tight urban enclaves and beginning a big collective move to the suburbs. It was a weird time. As Silver writes, “By the end of the 1950s, suburban Jews developed a new, vicarious form of affiliation; because Jewishness seemed inauthentic in suburban space, they sought membership in a far-off land whose moral credibility was rooted in a sacred Jewish past.”

Jaffa oranges and creamy feta seemed like our delicious due for surviving the Holocaust.

Exodus , the novel, arrived when Jews were searching for a new self-image. Uris was committed to a vision of muscular, heroic Jews, not ghetto weaklings or “golden riders of the psychoanalytic couch” (Silver’s term for Jewish American intellectual novelists like Philip Roth, who Uris loathed — and the feeling was evidently mutual). As Prell put it, “ Exodus was a work of popular fiction that established a deep sense of Jewish identity, [instead of one] that had been far more complicated, fragmented, filled with shame. This book made the case that that’s not who you are as a Jew.”

As I got older, though, my youthful love of the book started to feel like an embarrassing crush on an teen idol. When I thought about Exodus at all, I recalled it as wildly sexist and reductive. More importantly, I wanted to forge my own sense of Jewish American selfhood that didn’t rely on endless stories of Israeli heroism and Holocaust horror, the twin narratives that seemed to direct so much of Jewish education and identity formation. Later, the Israeli government moved increasingly rightward and Jewish settlements expanded incrementally in East Jerusalem, Gaza , and the West Bank , and I turned away from Israel as a source of Jewish identity entirely.

I instead focused my attention on Jewish art, Jewish folklore and mythology, Jewish food, home-based rituals like lighting Shabbat candles and building a sukkah and hosting Passover seders. I chose to ponder Jewish values and history through culture, through learning about Jewish leadership in American labor and feminist movements. When I had kids, I addressed Israel the way many Gen X and older millennial parents have: by avoiding it. By sighing when the subject came up, saying “It’s complicated,” and passing the latkes.

I no longer have the luxury of noping out. I need to address my ambivalence and confront the gaps in my education if I’m to talk responsibly about Israel and Palestine , including the current siege of Gaza , with my own kids, who’ve grown up in silence. (I choose the word advisedly: Breaking the Silence is an Israeli NGO established by Israel Defense Forces veterans to talk about their experiences in the Occupied Territories since 2000.) My failure to discuss Israel with my children, even if I don’t have answers, is my fault. The first time I publicly wrestled with the subject of talking to kids about Israel when you’re dismayed by Israel, I got an email from a reader who wrote, “Jews like you are how my family ended up in the ovens.” Now I think if you’re not being accused of being a self-hating Jew by some folks and a Zionist stooge by others, you’re doing something wrong .

As part of my self-education, I decided to reread Exodus and watch the movie, which I’d never seen. (Spoiler alert: This is one of those rare cases in which the movie is better than the book. Which is damning with faint praise.)

An illustration of Paul Newman as Ari, holding a gun, with Alexandra Stewart as Jordana in the background.

Exodus is a novel, but the foreword begins, “Most of the events in Exodus are a matter of history and public record.” The rest of the book’s 608 (!) pages are filled with a litany of historical names and real places. There’s no afterword offering clarification; I had to keep looking up what was factual and what Uris had invented. The Jewish characters are wholly noble, though their politics differ, with some swearing by diplomacy and others by violent freedom-fighting. The Arabs — both Christian and Muslim — are evil cartoons. Uris luxuriates in phrases like “so illiterate and so backward,” “blood orgy,” “slithering along the ground with knives between their teeth,” “nearly insane with rage,” and “the dregs of humanity.” He makes sweeping generalizations like “There was little song or laughter or joy in Arab life. It was a constant struggle to survive. In this atmosphere, cunning, treachery, murder, feuds, and jealousies became a way of life.”

The book proffers only two good Arabs. One is Kammal, the village leader who says, “The Jews are the only salvation for the Arab people. The Jews are the only ones in a thousand years who have brought light to this part of the world.” (When Kammal’s weak-willed son Taha takes over as mukhtar, he spends his time obsessing over having forbidden sex with Jordana and preparing to betray her brother Ari.) The other good Arab is Mussa, the Druze who saves Ari’s life when he’s shot by British soldiers after breaking his uncle out of jail. Mussa is essentially faceless, but has a “carriage of dignity” and a village that’s “sparkling white and clean in comparison to the filth and decay of most Arab villages.” How nice.

Exodus ’s Jews just want to live in peace. The only time they do something bad, it’s “a strange and inexplicable sequence of events” — a mysterious accident! In a short passage based on the real-life 1948 Deir Yassin massacre, in which Zionist paramilitary groups attacked a village of mostly women and children, Uris says, “a panic broke out among Maccabee troops and they opened up a wild and unnecessary firing.” Strange! Inexplicable! His problem with the massacre isn’t the dead innocents; it’s that it “fixed a stigma on the young nation that it would take decades to erase.”

Exodus is a novel, but the foreword begins, “Most of the events in Exodus are a matter of history and public record.”

The 1948 narrative I and so many others grew up with, the one depicted in Exodus, maintains that Arab leaders, both in Palestine and in the wider world, told residents to flee while Jews begged them to stay. We now know this isn’t true. Left-leaning Israeli media have reported on the Israeli government’s ever-increasing efforts to suppress scholarship on 1948-era Palestine and its history, including the fact that Zionists attacked Arab residents and seized their land. Palestinians are more than justified in calling their own Exodus the Nakba — the Catastrophe.

The argument that Uris and the modern Jewish right share, that non-Jewish Palestinians chose to leave, isn’t correct. The insistence that Israel is inherently virtuous because, after the Nakba, it did what America refused to do and accepted Jewish refugees (this time, the ones expelled from or threatened with murder in the Arab countries in which they were residing in 1948) isn’t relevant. Absorbing all those refugees meant less land — or the impossibility of return — for the Palestinians. Jews deserve a homeland, but so do Palestinians. As I sighed to my kids: It’s complicated. But I also need them to know that there are Jews working for the rights of Palestinians. Organizations like T’ruah , the New Israel Fund , and B’Tselem have long focused on peace and human rights throughout Israel and the Jewish world.

When I sat down to watch Exodus, the movie, with my home-from-college kid (who quickly fled, noting, “This is boring”), I was surprised to find it more nuanced than the book. Director Otto Preminger explicitly rejected Uris’s rabid anti-Arab prejudice. “I don’t believe that there are any real villains,” he later said. Preminger hired Uris, who had written a successful screenplay, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, to adapt his novel into a movie but quickly wound up firing him. Preminger claimed he tried to work with Uris’s script but gave up a third of the way through; Uris claimed he never wrote a word and was fired for his beliefs. Uris said, “Otto was a terrorist — he’s Arafat, a Nazi, Saddam Hussein.” Preminger replaced him with the then-blacklisted non-Jewish screenwriter Dalton Trumbo; it was Trumbo’s first script credit since his refusal to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947.

“I think my picture is closer to the truth, and to the historic facts, than is the book,” said Preminger. In a strangely prescient snippet of dialogue not in the book, Ari objects to his uncle Akiva’s attacks on unsanctioned targets: “I think these bombings and these killings hurt us with the United Nations,” he says. “A year ago, we had the respect of the whole world. Now, when they read about us, it’s nothing but terror and violence.”

Preminger’s claim that his film “avoids propaganda” is debatable, though. It still features a rousing speech from a Jerusalem balcony, in which Ari’s father Barak, a diplomatic Jewish leader played by Lee J. Cobb, tells a vast cheering crowd that the United Nations has voted to partition the land into two states and urges, “To the Arab population of Jewish Palestine, we make the following appeal: The Grand Mufti has asked you either to annihilate the Jewish population or to abandon your homes and your lands and to seek the weary path of exile. We implore you, remain in your homes and in your shops! And we shall work together as equals in the free state of Israel!” In reality, not so much.

Filming a crowd scene for the Otto Preminger film Exodus in 1959.

My kid is right: The movie isn’t great. It is three and a half hours long. (Comedian Mort Sahl supposedly stood up three hours into a screening and yelled, “Otto! Let my people go! ”) Paul Newman is wooden. Preminger’s wife Hope Bryce told the director’s biographer that Newman and Preminger got off on the wrong foot when the actor arrived with five pages of notes and suggestions about his character and Preminger immediately informed him he wasn’t changing a word of Trumbo’s script. When filming began and Newman asked what Ari should be thinking in a certain scene while eavesdropping on two other characters, Preminger barked, “Oh for God’s sake, just stand there.”

But as Ari Ben Canaan, Newman is at his most ravishing. Who cares about wooden acting when a human looks like that ? Seeing this huge movie star (half-Jewish, as both Adam Sandler and my mother note) wearing a Star of David on his wet, bare, heaving chest — in his first scene, he’s just swum to shore in a heroic and strenuous reconnaissance mission, obviously — at a time when Jews were mostly depicted onscreen in sword-and-sandal epics and generally played by the goyish and unpleasant Charlton Heston is surreal. Newman embodies exactly what Uris wanted from his Ari: an icy blue-eyed action hero, not a cringing shtetl weakling.

Sal Mineo — who also has a shirtless scene — gives an excellent performance as an angry young Holocaust survivor and Nazi rape victim. (Again, this is not in the book. Only Jewish women get raped in the book.) Mineo is naturalistic and emotional, and his chemistry with every other actor is magnetic. The movie’s action scenes are thrilling; there are flashes of humor the book lacks; the fact that the film was shot on location lends immediacy and verisimilitude. But it’s still cheesy, and it reminds me of how far away modern-day Israel is from the naïve, glorious promise of my childhood. I wonder how many other Jews my age and older have considered the ways in which Exodus warped our perception of the country and made us slow to demand better of it.

I’d argue that it’s worthwhile for everyone to revisit books and movies they loved as kids. You too may be shocked to learn how you missed or even internalized some pretty problematic ideas. Real life is knotty and multistranded, and reductive storytelling harms us all. “Uris was a vivid and suspenseful writer,” said Prell — who, by the way, also read Exodus when she was 12 — “and a simple enough writer to tell a simple story about one of the most complicated places on earth.”

The movie changes the book’s ending, making it bleaker. Ari stands over an open grave containing two corpses wrapped in linen. A double funeral, for an Arab and a Jew. Ari says, in Trumbo’s words, “I look at these two people and I want to howl like a dog. I want to shout ‘Murder!’ so that the whole world will hear it and never forget. It’s right that these two people should lie side by side in this grave, because they will share it in peace. But the dead always share the earth in peace. And that’s not enough. … I swear, on the bodies of these two people, that the day will come when Arab and Jew will share a peaceful life in this land that they have always shared in death.” But in the final shot of the film, a line of jeeps come, and the men and women with rifles hop in, and we know there will be more killing.

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"Exodus" (Saul Bass Poster) 1960 Columbia Pictures

The State of Israel is created in 1948, resulting in war with its Arab neighbors. The State of Israel is created in 1948, resulting in war with its Arab neighbors. The State of Israel is created in 1948, resulting in war with its Arab neighbors.

Otto Preminger
Dalton Trumbo
Paul Newman
Eva Marie Saint
Ralph Richardson
103 User reviews
33 Critic reviews
70 Metascore
5 wins & 7 nominations total

Top cast 59

Ari Ben Canaan

Kitty Fremont

Gen. Sutherland

Maj. Caldwell

Barak Ben Canaan

Dr. Lieberman

Akiva Ben Canaan

Jordana Ben Canaan
David Ben Ami

All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Trivia At the film's premiere, after three hours had elapsed, with twenty-eight minutes remaining, comedian Mort Sahl stood and shouted, " Otto Preminger , let my people go!" The incident became a legendary episode of Hollywood lore.
Goofs About 1:15 into the movie Ari asks Kitty how many Minutemen were at Concord. When she doesn't know he answers 77. But he was mistaking Concord for Lexington Green, the first of British encounters, where there were only 77. By the time they reached the Old North Bridge in Concord, there were over 400 minutemen.

Ari Ben Canaan : This is Taha, Mukhtar of Abu Yesha. And this is Karen, Secretary of the Rooms Committee, Bungalow 12, Gan Dafna. We have no Kadi to pray for Taha's soul. And we have no Rabbi to pray over Karen. Taha should have lived a long life, surrounded by his people and his sons. And death should have come to him... as an old friend offering the gift of sleep. It came, instead, as a maniac. And Karen, who loved her life, and who lived it as purely as a flame, why did God forget her? Why did she have to stumble upon death so young? And all alone? And in the dark? We of all people... should no longer be surprised when death reaches out to us. With the world's insanity and our own slaughtered millions, we should be used to senseless killing. But I am not used to it. I cannot and will not get used to it. I look at these two people, and I want to howl like a dog. I want to shout 'murder', so that the whole world will hear it and never forget it. It's right that these two people should lie side by side in this grave, because they will share it in peace. But the dead always share the earth in peace. And that's not enough. It's time for the living to have a turn. A few miles from here, there are people who are fighting and dying, and we must join them. But I swear, on the bodies of these two people, that the day will come when Arab and Jew will share, in a peaceful life, this land that they have always shared in death. Taha, old friend, and very dear brother. Karen, child of light, daughter of Israel. Shalom.

Crazy credits Opening credits shown over a background of flames.
Connections Featured in Chelovek ukhodit za ptitsami (1976)
Soundtracks Greensleeves (uncredited) Traditional English air

User reviews 103

Jun 23, 2007
How long is Exodus? Powered by Alexa
January 2, 1961 (Brazil)
United States
Acre, Israel
Otto Preminger Films
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$4,000,000 (estimated)

Technical specs

Runtime 3 hours 28 minutes

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Exodus (1960): Preminger’s Tale of the Formation of Israel, Starring Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint

United Artists

“Exodus,” Otto Preminge’s chronicle of the events that led to the 1947 formation of the State of Israel, is an ambitious but sprawling, occasionally stirring but ultimately unsatisfying historical epic.

Blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo adapted to the big screen Leon Uris’ best-selling novel of the same title, and Jewish director Preminger decided to give it the treatment of a big Hollywood saga, with high production values, on-location shooting, and major actors, such as Paul Newman (at a high point of his career after “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”) and Eva Marie Saint (after Hitchcock’s smash hit, “North By Northwest”).

On a superficial level, the movie is an enjoyable piece of propaganda, siding completely with the Jewish perspective and Israel’s heroic struggle for independence and legit right for nationhood in 1947. Nonetheless, most serious critics dismissed the film as honorable attempt that’s overlong (212 minutes), episodic, thematically diffuse, and lacking a strong emotional center.

As a star vehicle, “Exodus” also leaves much to be desired. Newman, a Jewish-American actor plays the hero, Hagannah leader Ari Ben Canaan, in a competent but not entirely compelling performance, that received at best polite notices and faint praise. Rumors have it that he didn’t get along with his autocratic director.

The well-known story of Exodus details the internment of some 30,000 Jews who have fled Europe to the island of Cyprus, their attempts to enter Palestine frustrated by the British. Ari Ben Canaan (Newman), an officer of the Jewish underground (the Palestine-based Hagannah), implements a heroic project designed to dramatize the Jews¬í plight and their determination to win through dignity and freedom.

Six hundred Jews are engineered by Ari and his aides into an escape aboard the Exodus, a freighter ship, before engaging in a lengthy hunger strike to protest the British destroyers who block their way to the Promised Land. They then threaten to blow themselves up if the British come aboard.

On the ship, we get to meet two lovely women. Kitty Fremont (Eva Marie Saint), is an American nurse-widow, whose journalist husband had died. She is now a surrogate mother to a refugee child, Karen (Jill Haworth), whom she has taken under her wing.

Surprisingly, General Sutherland (an impressive Ralph Richardson), commander at Cyprus, proves sympathetic to the Jews¬í plight and influences the British to permit the ship¬ís journey to Haifa.

The story veers uncomfortably from the political to the more domestic arena. Once the refugees land, Ari and Kitty fall in love despite tensions, hardships, and ideological disagreements.

Thereupon, Preminger and Trumbo offer some blatant lessons in Zionism for the non-Jewish spectators, framed in Freudian psychology. Through Kitty, we gets insights into the Jews¬í plight, bolstering Ari¬ís morale as he comes into conflict, along with his father, Hagannah stalwart Barak Ben Canaan (Lee J. Cobb), with his uncle, Akiva (David Opotoshu), and Dov Landau (Sal Mineo), a young Auschwitz survivor, who are members of the Irgun, a alternate Jewish terrorist organization, which disagrees with the Hagannah’s more pacifist approach.

In the end, convinced that action at all costs is mandatory if a Jewish State is to be established, Ari joins the Irgun despite his beliefs, thus helps actively to plan and carry out a mass breakout of Jews from the prison at Acre. Though the operation is successful, there’s a price to be paid and Akiva (and others) is killed.

Nonetheless, Israeli independence is achieved shortly thereafter with a huge celebration. Sharply uneven, the movie seldom is able to establish a narrative flow or desirable rhythm, and there are too many ideological and pedagogical speeches that are simple there for expository matters¬óto make sure that the audience has some necessary historical background.

That said, Preminger should be commended for orchestrating some memorable sequences, such as the bombing of the King David Hotel and other masterful crowd scenes.

Ernest Gold’s dramatically touching score deservedly was nominated for an Oscar. And so was Sam Leavitt’s color cinematography. A third Oscar nomination was awarded to Sal Mineo, who plays Dov Landau, a young committed Zionist who befriends Karen, and later on risks his life to save her.

Paul Newman Eva Marie Saint Ralph Richardson Peter Lawford Lee J. Cobb Sal Mineo John Derek Hugh Griffith David Opotoshu Jill Haworth Gregory Ratoff Felix Aylmer Marius Goring Alexandra Stewart Michael Wager Martin Benson Paul Stevens Betty Walker Martin Miller Victor Maddern George Maharis John Crawford Samuel Segal Dahn Ben Motz Peter Madden Ralph Truman Joseph Furst Paul Strasine Marc Burns Esther Reichstadt Zepporah Peled Philo Hauser

An Otto Preminger Production released through United Artists. Produced and directed by Otto Preminger. Screenplay by Dalton Trumbo, based on the novel by Leon Uris. Photographed by Sam Leavitt. Music by Ernest Gold. Art Director, Richard Day. Set Decorations by Dario Simani. Film Editor, Louis R. Loeffler. Titles designed by Saul Bass. Sound by Paddy Cunningham, Red Law and John Cox. Sound effects by Win Ryder. Special effects by Cliff Richardson. Makeup by George Lane. Wardrobe by Joe King, Marge Slater, and May WAlding. Hairstyles by A.G. Scott. Miss Saint¬ís clothes by Rudi Gernreich. Costume Coordinator, Hope Bryce. General Manager, Martin C. Schute. Production Manager, Eva Monley. Assistant to the Producer, Maxt Slater. Assistant Director, Gerry O¬íHara. Filmed in Israel. Technicolor and Super-Panavision 70.

Running time: 212 minutes.

PROFESSOR / CRITIC / AUTHOR

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3 1/2-Hour Film Based on Uris' Novel Opens

By Bosley Crowther

Dec. 16, 1960

THE gingerly awaited film version of Leon Uris' novel, "Exodus," which its producer-director, Otto Preminger, unveiled at the Warner Theatre last night, turns out to be a massive, overlong, episodic, involved and generally inconclusive "cinemarama" of historical and fictional events connected with the liberation of the State of Israel in 1947-1948.It also turns out to be a dazzling, eye-filling, nerve-tingling display of a wide variety of individual and mass reactions to awesome challenges and, in some of its sharpest personal details, a fine reflection of experience that rips the heart.If this rapid-fire estimation of Mr. Preminger's effort to pack the guts of Mr. Uris' corpulent novel into a three-hour-and-thirty-two-minute film seems ambiguous and perhaps indecisive, it is because the film itself is an ambiguous piece of work, and the decisions that might have rendered it more cohesive and dramatically compelling were not made by the people who should have made them-namely, Mr. Preminger and Dalton Trumbo, who wrote the script.Obviously, these two craftsmen, in all sincerity, wanted to embrace as much as they could of the three main phases of the popular novel. That is to say, they wanted to tell, first, the important story of the truly Odyssean transport of a shipload of European Jews from British blockaded Cyprus to forbidden Palestine. That is a full-scale social drama and a saga of resolution in itself, with its many vignettes of individual courage weaving into a large—well, mosaic is the word.Then they wanted to continue the threads of several parallel plots involving an assortment of major characters through the subsequent conflicts and strains that occur vis-à-vis the powerful British prior to the United Nations' partition of Palestine. And, finally, they wished to tell something of the post-partition fight of the Jews against the displaced Arabs, with respect to the major characters that remain.Opting to fill such a canvas, which was a critical decision in itself, Mr. Preminger and Mr. Trumbo took a long chance on tangling and losing some threads. With so many characters — at least seven—to be picked up and engineered through a maze of separate tensions, some of a political nature and some of a purely personal sort, and to be got through emotional situations and explosive civil war incidents, they ran the risk of being superficial and losing momentum in sequential stops and starts.They were not able to escape it entirely. The principal weakness of their film is that it has so much churning around in it that no deep or solid stream of interest evolves—save a vague rooting interest in the survival of all the nice people involved.Ari Ben Canaan, the foremost hero, who is forcefully, albeit much too neatly, played by an always well-shaved Paul Newman, is a mighty stout fellow to have around, quick and sure with the command decisions, but it is hard to gather precisely where he stands or what distinguishes him as an individual from any other fellow who would naturally be attracted to Eva Marie Saint.Miss Saint, in turn, is desperately wrought up and impressively earnest as an American widow and trained nurse who takes up with the Jewish refugees in Cyprus and goes on to fight and love with them. But she, too, lacks the depth and fullness that might be had if the film took more time with her. Say this for her, however: she does look a harassed, heat-worn girl.As for a well-bred, friendly Arab whom John Derek plays stoically, it is hard to make out what he is thinking, except that he's in a nasty jam.However, for all the interruptions and surface skimming with other characters, the film makers do manage to come out strongly—even brilliantly—in certain powerful scenes. The character of Dov Landau, a Polish terrorist, played superbly by Sal Mineo, is absolutely overwhelming in a scene where he offers himself as a candidate for the Irgun, the Jewish extremists' underground. And the character of Akiva, the Irgun leader, who is performed by David Opatoshu in a moving and unforgettable way, is also fine in this scene and others—a flaming symbol of devotion to a cause.Ralph Richardson and Peter Lawford are incisive as British military types; Jill Haworth is fresh and deeply poignant as a brave 15-year-old refugee; Lee J. Cobb is impressive (particularly in one scene with Mr. Opatoshu) as a Jewish conservative, and Felix Aylmer, Michael Wager, Martin Miller and the late Gregory Ratoff are amusing and strong as other Jews.Furthermore, Mr. Preminger has captured within the scope of his color cameras a continuously varied and vivid panorama of Cyprus and Palestine. He shot his picture in those places—most of it in the present Israel—and has spared no expense in reproducing historic events much as they occurred. The famous liberation of Jewish prisoners from the old fortress at Acre is excitingly done, and other scenes of Haganah and Irgun actions against the British and Arabs are sharp and tough.It is notable, incidentally, that Mr. Trumbo and Mr. Preminger have considerably temporized in exposing the adversaries. They have more tension between Haganah and Irgun than between Jews and British, and the Arabs seem mainly inspired to resist the partition by villainous former Nazi provocateurs.In the end, one should take from this picture a shaken feeling of having been through a lot of harsh and ennobling experiences. There is a colorful musical score by Ernest Gold.

The CastEXODUS, screen play by Dalton Trumbo, from the novel by Leon Uris; directed and produced by Otto preminger; distributed by United Artists. At the Warner Theatre, Broadway and Forty-seventh Street. Running time: 212 minutes.Ari Ben Canaan . . . . . Paul NewmanKitty Fremont . . . . . Eva Marie SaintGeneral Sutherland . . . . . Ralph RichardsonMajor Caldwell . . . . . Peter LawfordBarak Ben Canaan . . . . . Lee J. CobbDov Landau . . . . . Sal MineoTaha . . . . . John DerekMandria . . . . . Hugh GriffithLakavitch . . . . . Gregory RatoffDr. Lieberman . . . . . Felix AylmerAkiva . . . . . David OpatoshuKaren . . . . . Jill HaworthVon Storch . . . . . Marius GoringJordana . . . . . Alexandra StewartDavid . . . . . Michael WagerReuben . . . . . Paul StevensSarah . . . . . Betty WalkerDr. Odenheim . . . . . Martin MillerSergeant . . . . . Victor Maddern

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United Artists

Summary The State of Israel is created in 1948, resulting in war with its Arab neighbors.

Directed By : Otto Preminger

Written By : Dalton Trumbo, Leon Uris

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Paul Newman

Ari ben canaan, eva marie saint, kitty fremont, ralph richardson, gen. sutherland, peter lawford, maj. caldwell, lee j. cobb, barak ben canaan, hugh griffith, gregory ratoff, felix aylmer, dr. lieberman, david opatoshu, akiva ben canaan, jill haworth, marius goring, alexandra stewart, jordana ben canaan, michael wager, david ben ami, martin benson, paul stevens, betty walker, martin miller, dr. odenheim, victor maddern, critic reviews.

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COMMENTS

Exodus
Exodus. NEW. Based on Leon Uris' novel, this historical epic provides a dramatic backstory to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, in the aftermath of World War II. Ari Ben Canaan (Paul ...
Exodus: Gods and Kings movie review (2014)
4 min read. Exodus. A numbing and soulless spectacle of 3-D, computer-generated imagery run amok, Ridley Scott 's "Exodus: Gods and Kings" presents an enduring tale by pummeling us over the head with it. The story of Moses rising up against the Pharaoh Ramses and leading hundreds of thousands of Hebrew slaves out of Egypt to freedom is ...
Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014)
Exodus: Gods and Kings: Directed by Ridley Scott. With Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, John Turturro, Aaron Paul. The defiant leader Moses rises up against Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II, setting six hundred thousand slaves on a monumental journey of escape from Egypt and its terrifying cycle of deadly plagues.
Exodus: Gods and Kings
Rated 2/5 Stars • Rated 2 out of 5 stars 08/21/24 Full Review paul w An excellent take on the biblical book of Exodus. Of particular interest is Mose's struggles with God. Of particular interest ...
'Exodus: Gods and Kings': Film Review
Spectacularly filmed and intermittently well acted, though not quite as much campy fun as the DeMille version, the picture looks likely to attract a substantial audience even if some religious ...
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Exodus: Gods and Kings, out Friday, stars Christian Bale as Moses in the Biblical epic, opposite Joel Edgerton as his brother and ruler. Also starring John Turturro, Ben Mendolsohn, Ben Kingsley ...
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Film Review: 'Exodus: Gods and Kings' An improbably Anglo-led cast aside, Ridley Scott's Old Testament epic is a genuinely imposing spectacle.
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"Exodus" is ludicrous only by accident, which isn't much fun and is the surest sign of what we might call a New Testament sensibility at work. But the movie isn't successfully serious, either.
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Full Review | Original Score: C | Aug 10, 2021. Richard Crouse Richard Crouse. Scott's film eschews all the Hollywood glam of DeMille's biblical epic. It's humanistic and so gritty you'll feel ...
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Exodus: Gods and Kings works best when it's about Christian Bale's unique Moses and his desire to discipline God. Ridley Scott is deliberately walking over holy ground with Exodus: Gods and Kings ...
Exodus (1960 film)
Exodus is a 1960 American epic historical drama film about the founding of the State of Israel.Produced and directed by Otto Preminger, the screenplay was adapted by Dalton Trumbo from the 1958 novel of the same name by Leon Uris.The film stars an ensemble cast including Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint, Ralph Richardson, Peter Lawford, Lee J. Cobb, Sal Mineo, John Derek and George Maharis.
Exodus: Gods and Kings
Exodus: Gods and Kings is a 2014 biblical epic film directed and produced by Ridley Scott, and written by Adam Cooper, Bill Collage, Jeffrey Caine, and Steven Zaillian.The film stars Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, John Turturro, Aaron Paul, Ben Mendelsohn, Sigourney Weaver, and Ben Kingsley.It is inspired by the biblical episode of the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt led by Moses and related ...
Exodus: Gods and Kings Movie Review
Kids say (25 ): EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS has a somber, dreary quality, punctuated by a thrumming, droning music score. Director Ridley Scott has made some great films, but he seems drawn to huge battle epics, like Kingdom of Heaven and Robin Hood, which he doesn't seem particularly suited to. The mood of this film doesn't invite anything in the ...
Exodus: Gods and Kings
2014. PG-13. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. 2 h 30 m. Summary Moses (Christian Bale) rises up against the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses (Joel Edgerton), setting 400,000 slaves on a monumental journey of escape from Egypt and its terrifying cycle of deadly plagues. [20th Century Fox] Action. Adventure.
Movie review: 'Exodus: Gods and Kings'
By Ted Giese. Darren Aronofsky's "Noah" (2013) was an opinionated film chock full of dark, cryptic, extra-biblical mysticism and environmentalist concerns often feeling like propaganda for something. Ridley Scott's "Exodus: Gods and Kings," on the whole, is a much different film. His sword-and-sandal epic is surprisingly restrained ...
If You Can Wade Through the Dreadful First Hour of Exodus, Old
movie review Dec. 12, 2014 If You Can Wade Through the Dreadful First Hour of Exodus , Old-Fashioned Spectacle Awaits By Bilge Ebiri , a film critic for New York and Vulture
Exodus: Gods And Kings Review
Running Time: 150 minutes. Certificate: 12A. Original Title: Exodus: Gods And Kings. The Bible shows us God can talk through killing or through allowing his son to be killed. It's the weird ...
Exodus: Gods and Kings
Violent Content. Battles. Plagues. Drownings. This movie suffers from its share of death and destruction. Egypt's horrors open with a plague of crocodiles who bloodily chomp on several fishermen and one another as well, turning the water red (by way of blood and, according to the pharaoh's naturalistic explanation, stirring the Nile's red silt).
How Exodus, the hit novel and movie, influenced American views on ...
Take a look at this 1958 novel. Leon Uris's bestselling epic Exodus — and its hit movie adaptation starring Paul Newman — influenced generations of Americans, from the suburbs to the State ...
Exodus (1960)
Exodus: Directed by Otto Preminger. With Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint, Ralph Richardson, Peter Lawford. The State of Israel is created in 1948, resulting in war with its Arab neighbors.
Exodus (1960): Preminger's Tale of the Formation of Israel, Starring
The well-known story of Exodus details the internment of some 30,000 Jews who have fled Europe to the island of Cyprus, their attempts to enter Palestine frustrated by the British. Ari Ben Canaan (Newman), an officer of the Jewish underground (the Palestine-based Hagannah), implements a heroic project designed to dramatize the Jews¬í plight ...
3 1/2-Hour Film Based on Uris' Novel Opens
THE gingerly awaited film version of Leon Uris' novel, "Exodus," which its producer-director, Otto Preminger, unveiled at the Warner Theatre last night, turns out to be a massive, overlong ...
Exodus Reviews
Trumbo's dialogue has its corny moments, purple patches and inevitable preachy passages, and the cast is jarringly uneven...but on the whole Exodus is a formidable accomplishment embracing suspense, danger, passion, romance, politics, religion, intrigue, sacrifice and bravery in an entertaining fashion for 3 1/2 hours. [10 Sep 1998, p.F12] Read ...

Exodus: Gods and Kings

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