Exodus: Gods and Kings review

         If Hollywood knew what they were doing, Bible stories would be the next major source for untapped IPs. They’re ripe with special effects potential and simplistic, Campbellian hero’s journey narratives, and not only will they draw in big crowds in the flyover states but if they keep it Old Testament they could even play well abroad. “Exodus: Gods and Kings” is Riddley’s Scott’s adaptation of the famous story of Moses and unlike Darren Aronofsky’s reinterpretation of “Noah” from earlier this year, this film in perfect step with the biblical text in terms of major plot details and the overall message of building trust in God, but rather than then the parable function it serves in the bible as a morality tale, Scott is far more interested in its cinematic function as a setting for swords and sandals spectacle, and maybe that’s not entirely a bad thing.
The first third of the movie teases a “Prince of Egypt” like tension between Moses (Christian Bale) before he becomes the self-identified revolutionary of the Hebrews and his adopted brother Ramses II (Joel Edgerton) before he becomes the Pharaoh. Having been raised as Egyptian royalty, Moses slowly learns through the oppressed peoples he visits on a business trip that he’s actually one of them, which then causes his existential collapse and his eventual exile from the kingdom. After wandering the desert for a bit, Moses makes a new life for himself when he marries and becomes a sheep herder, and all seems well until his newly acquainted Hebrew God asks him to return to Egypt to confront the Pharaoh and free the slaves.
Throughout the picture there’s a constant war between the spiritual and philosophic concerns of the content and the overbearing aesthetics and grandiosity of the production. The brother-against-brother storyline isn't properly milked for its dramatic potential as we’re initially told it’s going to be. Instead, midway through, Moses and Ramses are full-on enemies and that’s pretty much that.  There’s a small but significant thematic thread dealing with Moses’ increasingly taxing relationship with the elusive Biblical God, and every so often those concerns are dealt with in a semi-thoughtful and humanistic way; first when Moses is abruptly asked to leave his family to save his people, and then later as God instructs him sit and watch the Egyptians he grew up with tortured and killed by a host of terrifying plagues.
          The scenes depicting Moses’ struggle with his faith is about the only relatable thing here as the majority of the film feels and looks like a Las Vegas production, bathed in gold-tinted color-corrected lighting schemes, and spotlighting  a cast of Caucasian actors cheaply bronzed to look more ethnic , wearing bejeweled accessories and thick drag-queen eyeliner. Not helping this is a series of distracting and smirk-inducing casting choices with equally bizarre performances, including John Turturro as Moses and Ramses’ king father, Sigourney Weaver as their queen mother, who, with the exception of one scene, is seemingly only there to walk in and out of rooms, and Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul as a crazy-eyed Hebrew slave who has looks as if he had a bad month and wandered on set without any discernible direction.
         You can always expect a level of technical craft when it comes to a Riddley Scott production and you certainly get that here.  The sets are lavish, the cinematography is atmospheric and the special effects sequences such as the plagues and famed parting of the Red Sea, visually captures your attention. But despite Scott’s minimal attempt at humanizing this tale, a large gilded heap of camp buries the story elements and turns this overlong  epic into a theatrical Circ de Sole performance, and like a well-lit show at the Luxor, it has its entertainment value even if it lacks artistic credibility.

Grade: C-

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Dec-2014

Out of the Furnace review

               The characters in Scott Cooper’s “Out of the Furnace” have everything working against them. They’re under paid, they’re incarcerated, they’re deep in debt, they have cancer, and worst of all, they are they are living in the genre confines of a bleak rural noir. Like 2010’s “Winters Bone” or even this year’s “Prisoners”, crime and revenge has bled from the urban streets into the red-neck hills, where the consequences of human betrayal are met with even more brutality.

                Cooper’s follow up to his country music character-study “Crazy Heart” is quite a departure in style.  Even though the understated quietness of his scenery and the subtle direction of his actors are still intact, this movie moves away from the tangible warmth of the county-western bars and plunges deep into a dower underworld of drugs and murder. While Cooper philosophizes on America’s post Iraq psychology and the economic weight burdened on blue-collar culture, when the plot finally kicks into gear , his film settles confidently into its base interests as a nail-biting, pulp thriller--and an occasionally brassy one at that.

                Christian Bale and Casey Affleck play Russell and Rodney Baze, two brothers who live  in a rust-belt, steel town, and who each have their own crosses to bare. Russell is sent to prison for 5 years after a drunk driving accident and Rodney is sent to war in Iraq, where he hopes to make some money for the family. When Russell is finally set free, he finds his girl (Zoe Saldana) remarried and his brother is forced to lose bare-knuckle boxing matches to pay off his ever growing debt with a local drug syndicate. After Rodney goes missing and the cops are tied-up by jurisdiction to move forward with the case, Russell decides to investigate the rotted underbelly of this dangerous world himself.

                 “Out of the Furnace” isn’t nearly as profound or as A-level as it thinks it is, but the sincerity of the performances and a seat clenching third-act saves it from being an unrelenting downer.  Bale and lil’ Affleck are both effective without overplaying things and their instincts are tuned well enough know which note to play each scene.  Side performances from Willem Dafoe, Sam Shepard and the recently revived Forest Whitaker fill out their roles nicely as well. But it is Woody Harrelson as the tobacco stained, meth-head, hillbilly heavy, who drips with intimidating menace in every scene he steals.

                While spending the first half of the film stacking conflict on top of complication against the protagonists, the story feels a bit loose and shaggy, and slow to get going. But when the pawns have been put into place the despair truck is finally done unloading, all of this character work pays off in an old fashion man-hunt.  The violence is treated just a blunt as the emotions are approached with tenderness and the mechanics of the cat and mouse set-piece’s between Bale and Harrelson and genuinely exciting and unpredictable. 

                If you can wade through the woe-is-me grunge in all of it, there’s a half-way decent revenge movie to enjoy in here. I can’t say Cooper gives us anything we haven’t seen somewhere else done better—“No County For Old Men” and the Aussie gangster film  “Animal Kingdom” comes to mind—but sometimes when you get a respectable director and talented cast together you can end up with something pretty watchable.

Grade: B -

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Dec-2013