CHICAGO – Excelsior! Comic book legend Stan Lee’s famous exclamation puts a fine point on the third and final play of Mark Pracht’s FOUR COLOR TRILOGY, “The House of Ideas,” presented by and staged at City Lit Theater in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood. For tickets/details, click HOUSE OF IDEAS.
Film Review: No Faith in the Spectacle of ‘Exodus: Gods and Kings’
CHICAGO – The world certainly didn’t need another “Ten Commandments,” but director Ridley Scott tries to remake the 50’s Biblical epic anyway – led by Christian Bale as a scowling and shouting Moses. Yet Bale can’t hold a staff to Charlton Heston and Scott is no Cecil B. DeMille. Ostensibly this is a movie about the power of faith, but Scott’s film has no soul within.
Rating: 2.0/5.0 |
Bale starts as the favored adopted son of the aging pharaoh Seti (John Turturro). He’s the pharaoh who would rather hand over the keys to his kingdom to Moses than his own flesh and blood, the egotistical Ramses (an uncomfortable-looking Joel Edgerton). Moses starts out a cynic, but after a little trip to see the suffering the slaves are enduring, he learns of his own true Hebrew heritage.
Once the pharaoh dies and Ramses takes power he has Moses banished to exile. Moses becomes a sheep farmer, settles down with a wife and child, until he’s called to head back into the palace to free the slaves and tell the pharaoh to “let my people go.” Bale plays Moses as an easily enraged leader on the battlefield prone to shouting for little or no reason. He’s all beard and boorishness with a muddled British accent.
Joel Edgerton, John Turturro and Christian Bale in ‘Exodus: God and Kings’
Photo credit: 20th Century Fox