Reviews

The original bible story was quite brutal in my opinion, and I would normally not show it to kids. Oh my goodness, this installment didn't disappoint. Brutal genocidal god, portrayed as kind and generous, kills thousands of innocent children and everyone cheers. It could have been a story about abolishing slavery, it wasn't, just like in the bible. Instead only Jew slaves are saved, no mention for relieving burden for anyone else. Great, let's celebrate the death of kids.

My primary reservations with the story were that an all powerful God kills thousand of innocent children, and we are supposed to cheer. Even if you want to punish slave owners, do that (like Daenerys), don't kill their children. But the got goes beyond that, not only do slavers' kids die, but also everyone else's. Only a tiny fraction of Egyptian society owned slaves, most slaves were owned by "government" (read Pharaoh). >99% were regular people workers, farmers and so on. Also we shouldn't forget that most slaves were probably not Jewish, rather from other religions. Non-Jewish slaves suffer pretty bad, they'd think it couldn't get any worse. Then surprise: all your children are dead.

I don't have a full scale review here. I'm not a movie critic, however, I wanted to document few impressions I have about the movie. So I decided this page is the best place for it. It certainly contains spoilers. To begin with, this movie is actually pretty good. Quite funny and interesting plot. The couple of comments I have are: 1) It sort of portrayed that doping yourself to win cycling races is cool. I used to argue that, but it is generally against societal norms, so it's a bit strange. This reminded me of Lance Armstrong scandal and backlash, also about Olympic athletes. 2) Then I had an issue about why there is so much cheating going on in modern movies. But then I thought, yeah you gotta have a plot. Besides, Sam Rockwell's wife is the most unpleasant character in the movie. She appears to me as a feminist, independent, self-reliant woman. And look at what this philosophy made of her. -Thanks

The widespread critical and popular acclaim of this movie is surprising. This movie is wrong and stupid on many levels. To begin with I will say few good things about the spectacle. The movie does a good job portraying the desperation of human race. The loss of fertility and how people are losing hope was portrayed quite nicely. You feel for them and get desperate along with characters. Before I start talking about what actually is going in the plot, I will have to mention few basic facts about what must have been going on in such world. First of it is obvious that there must exist a gigantic scientific effort to understand why and solve the problem. This will most likely take a form of a large network of multinational government funded research centers. By this time everyone understands that if problem isn't solved humanity "goes bananas". Over the years such centers must have come up with some understanding. All their tiny, even nonexistent progress should be widely publicized to a population hungry for any straw of hope. In the movie, however, the only mentioned research center is a ship, which somehow exists without supplies and without any government supporting it. Even assuming such state of affairs, a militaristic nation such as UK is portrayed in the movie would quickly apprehend it to give people hope. What happens when a baby comes into such desperate and hopeless world? The mother herself or anyone close or anyone who knows her during pregnancy should submit to authorities. This is way ensures that the information goes public and people get hopeful again. This also assures that infertility research center gets hold of her. Not only they will be able to help and provide for her, but also they will make tremendous progress in combating affliction. The news of this will immediately infuse the whole world with hope and outlook for the future, after years of desperation. A pregnant woman submitting to the authorities will be the single greatest good thing that can happen in such world. And we know that the government is tyrannical, it has resources since it exerts tight control over the public, we can therefore conclude it has resources to conduct research and protect the young woman. It is hinted in the movie that such outcome might be undesirable because anti-immigration stance and overt racism. Those arguments are nonsense. Due to desperation and absence of hope the government faces complete chaos, anarchy, and degradation. The only chance to avoid impending apocalypse is to solve the infertility issue. Even appearance of a progress would give tremendous benefits to easing the unrest and restoring the order. So what happens in the movie is some weird small gang of revolutionaries/terrorists gets hold of the pregnant woman. This people are either completely evil or tremendously stupid since they deliberately prevent this woman to submit to authorities. The head of the organization, seemingly reasonable person, portrayed by Julianne Moore, doesn't think of giving people at large any hope either. Then there appears a genuinely good person, a protagonist of the story portrayed by Clive Oven. Instead of doing the right thing – immediate submission to authorities, he decides to steal the girl for the most retarded purpose anyone could think of. Here is his thinking process: "There exist a magic ship, with best research facilities on board. This ship will be somewhere close to the shore on that day near that harbor. So I'm gonna risk her (and my) life, put her into a flimsy boat and paddle out into the open sea. Never-mind my wounds, never-mind the fog, never-mind the waves, which could easily turn the boat over and drown us, never mind I will never find the ship even if it came, since I can't see anything 10m away. I will still go look magic ship because someone told someone who told someone that it is going to be there". Risking life and last hope of humanity for a fantasy is preposterous. I admit that meaning of ship might be symbolic, I but no matter how you cut it, going for the ship is evil because it is taking hope away from people.