By Marco Savoia
Ridley is back. The legendary director of masterpiece like Alien, Blade Runner and Gladiator yesterday presented his last movie at the World Premiere in Leicester Square: Exodus: Gods and Kings . Most of the main cast joined the British director, Sir Ben Kingsley, Joel Edgerton, Golshifteh Farahani, Maria Valverde and of course Christian Bale. The epic cast, including Aaron Paul, Sigourney Weaver, John Turturro, who didn’t attend the premiere, and Ridley Scott’s CV created a lot of expectation for this new version of the story of Moses and the exodus of the Hebrews. It’s been a while that Ridley hasn’t delighted us with a masterpiece of epic proportion. His last efforts (Prometheus and especially The Counselor) were quite overrated, so Scott decided to propose again what he does best: the historical drama, developing very well the two main characters: following the traditional story of Moses and Rhamses, the British director introduces them “close as brothers” showing them fighting together in battlefield, watching each others back, developing a relationship as he usually does in his movies between two great personality, think Commodo and Maximus in Gladiator, or the two protagonist of American Gangster.
The relationship between them works perfectly and rises into a spiral of tension and violence. On one side; the treason of Moses, his exile ordered by Rhamses and the increasing awareness that he can change the fate of his people. on the other hand; the arrogance of power, the repression made by the Pharaoh who is not sure anymore if he is a god or just a man. Everything flows very fast for 2 hours and 30 minutes.Mainly because Scott decides to delight us with astonishing CGI: some scenes like the first battle and above all the deadly plagues are truly outstanding. And there as some great performances, Bale does a great job as usual, and Joel Edgerton is perfect as the villain, the Australian actor does his best to portrait the arrogant Pharaoh. Exodus is definitely a won bet, finally Ridley.
