Scott's most recent attempt at a sword-and-sandals flick boasts about 25 minutes of technical mastery and over 2 hours of tedious bloat, wasting yet another game cast and veteran production crew in the process. Action and excitement is shockingly infrequent in a movie more intent to linger on dull political dialogues and trite family drama that it's tough to get remotely invested in. Though the plague sequence is a mighty sight to behold, it comes far too late in the film to possibly save it, and is simply a half-hour reprieve between all the yawn-inducing chatter. Were it 45 minutes shorter, the film would be much more tolerable though still greatly flawed. It vaguely attempts to be subversive by suggesting some practical explanations for the plagues, but doesn't do enough for fear of alienating the religious crowd, though going by the movie's disappointing box office take, even they weren't much interested in this treatment. They went to see Darren Aronofsky's Noah instead...