This is not the story straight from the bible. Instead, this is a story "inspired by" the story in the bible. As a result, the story lacks quite a bit of what made it significant. I know what happens in the biblical story, as I heard it many times, but I was actually confused with quite a bit of what was going on a lot of the time.
Who the hell thought that John Turturro (of Transformers fame) would make a good Egyptian king? Well, he plays Seti I, father of Ramesses II and mentor of Moses. He does a crappy job with a role he shouldn't have even gone to the casting call for. Like everyone in this movie, he tries to do an accent, and I really don't know why. It's not like they were all doing Egyptian accents, either. John tries a British accent - kind of. It's really bad.
Christian Bale is British, so surely his accent will be spot on, right? Have you ever seen the TV Show Vikings? Rather than have real accents, they have a kind of stilted way of speaking that is a bit distracting. Christian decided to have that very same accent (some of the time), and I have no idea why. Joel Edgerton is Australian, so his in-and-out accent is somewhat forgivable.
The accents are just annoying; the things that let this movie down are all in the storytelling. At one point they pretty much make the Egyptian gods just as powerful as the god of Abraham - and I think we know whose story this is supposed to be. Nevertheless, the movie starts off right from the beginning with a fortune teller who listens to the Egyptian gods and foretells the truth pretty perfectly.
And then there is the angst-filled Moses. Charleton Heston would have personally kicked the crap out of Christian Bale's Moses. He's a whiny jerk who dominates the screen for no good reason. He's supposed to be a great prophet, but he appears to just get handed information from a little boy. What? A little boy? I thought it was a burning bush. Well, it's a kid who originally stands next to a burning bush. And Moses has a son about the same age and facial structure, so I got the two confused pretty much every time one of them hit the screen.
Direction was not Ridley Scott's best
Acting was passable
Story was convoluted
Dialogue was bland
Effects were expensive and not worth it
Bottom Line: I was sorely disappointed in this movie. It wasn't as bad as Noah, but it was bad in its own right.
1.5/5