Review: Exodus reinvention empty like parted sea

The story of the Exodus from Egypt is a tale as old as time itself, to borrow a turn of phrase. It’s retold every Passover, both at the seder table and whenever “The Ten Commandments” is aired on television. But the latest adaptation — Ridley Scott’s epic film, “Exodus: Gods and Kings” — fails to meet expectations.

Scott’s “Exodus” alters the source material to service the story and ground the tale, but the attempt to reinvent the biblical narrative becomes laughable. Moses (Christian Bale) saves the life of his adoptive brother Ramses (Joel Edgerton) during a battle with a Hittite army, recalling an earlier prophecy that the skeptic Moses laughed off. He learns of his lineage from Nun (Sir Ben Kingsley), which leads to his exile by the now-Pharaoh Ramses II. During this nine-year exile, Moses has a child with Zipporah (Maria Valverde) and climbs a forbidden mountain — only to hit his head, see a burning bush, and get a request from a child messenger of G-d. Moses’s return to Memphis (Lower Egypt’s capital, not the hometown of Elvis) and demand for Ramses to pay the slaves or let them go leads to guerrilla warfare, hangings and arson by Ramses, and the Ten (Attempted To Be Rationally Explained) Plagues from G-d. Ramses relents and Moses gets the freed slaves to safety across the gradually receding Red Sea before a tsunami of epic proportions fills the sea — rather than the sea being parted.