Exodus

Set in the dystopian near-future of Promised Land, Exodus is a contemporary reworking of the story of Moses that remains staunchly faithful to its biblical reference points. But while some of these nods give the film resonance, most are accommodated by laughable plot contrivances. When a biblical reference can't be shoehorned in, a narrator intermittently appears to help clear things up. But narrative flaws are the least of Exodus's problems - unforgivably, parts of the dialogue are inaudible, and it's beset by an unhelpful political agenda that pitches Moses as an ambiguous terrorist/freedom fighter, carrying out atrocities to free his own people. This ambiguity reaches its nadir when the plague that kills the first born children of Egypt is represented by a suicide bombing in a primary school. Not even a malevolent turn by Bernard Hill as fascist leader Pharaoh Mann is enough to save Exodus from being at best misguided, at worst politically dubious. [Christopher Mackie]