The gulf between Moses movies can be measured in beards. For The Ten Commandments (1956), Charlton Heston unrolled a splendid carpet of chin-hair; for the latest incarnation, Christian Bale offers realistic, scraggly whiskers that might belong to the third apostle from the right in any average biblical epic. Exodus: Gods and Kings prefers angst over showmanship, and the picture suffers accordingly.
Surely the film’s director, Ridley Scott, has been waiting all his life to get a crack at the florid yarn-spinning of the Old Testament.