What a beautiful movie!

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

I read bad reviews of this one after the other before I saw this and I was prepared not to like this. My friend bought this for $5.00 about a year and a half ago and it became one of those DVDs that sits unwatched in storage. Being Easter Sunday and not being able to access either the 1956 version or Ben-Hur, we decided to give this a spin. I was surprised at how good this was. This was a somewhat grittier version of the story, but, as it is explained in a "making-of" documentary extra on the disc, this was the film maker's intent. The production values are excellent as is the music score. The 3-hour film is broken into two parts, thus allowing a natural "intermission". The acting is good, the direction is good and it really holds your attention so what's not to like?

I didn't expect much when I decided to watch this thing on TV, but thought it might be entertaining enough to pass an evening. I was wrong.It has even more inaccurate and/or made up stuff than the 1956 version. I am not a church going person, but I have read the Bible and the story of the Exodus. At least most of the made up stuff in the 1956 version is just drama and doesn't seem to change the meaning of the story that I read in the Bible. This movie seems to reflect a theological meaning that is different from what is generally believed by modern Christians and Jews. There is so much more "drama" during the course of the Exodus itself. There is very little about Moses and God but a lot about soul searching and dark nights of the soul. I don't think Moses would have given The Ten Commandments as if he wrote them himself. If God had chosen this Moses, I don't think they would have made it. Moses whines and feels sorry for himself. He does not act like a man who has had God talk to him directly. I really do feel like Charlton Heston was probably closer to the real Moses than the Moses in this movie.Besides my religious distaste for this movie, it is a bad movie. The acting poor and melodramatic. The sets and costumes are only a few steps above a play put on at church.The 1956 movie was so much better. It had the grandeur and the reverence this new movie lacks. Don't waste your time on it. I gave it a 2. I only give a 1 to a movie so bad it is funny. This wasn't funny.

So, I haven't actually seen this movie, but the last person's comment was that Moses is made out to be a whiner, and that later in the movie he has the believers slaughter the unbelievers and cuts a second set of tablets. If that's the case, I really want to see this, because that's far more biblically accurate than the deMille's movie. In the Bible Moses *was* a whiner to begin with, and when the golden calf incident occurred, he had the tribe of Levi kill about 3000 people, and then God told him to cut new tablets to replace the ones he had broken. Just thought I'd say it to clarify that yes, it actually is in there, no matter how unpleasant we may think it.

Biblical story developed in on a great scale for the TV though no such as the classic Cecil B. De Mille's version. This vivid storytelling although fairly standard follows appropriately the Moses'life ,the son of a Jew slave, from birth and abandonment on a basket over river Nile, as when the Pharaoh Seti ordered the killing of all newborn babies, being pick up by Egyptian princesses(Padme Lasksmi,Claire Bloom)and he's raised in the royal court, becoming into Prince of Egypt. One time grown-up Moses(Dougray Scott) embarks a supernatural mission, getting the freedom for Hebrews. Then ,Moses retires to desert where meets Jethro(Omar Sharif),marring him with his daughter Sefora. The stoic Moses along with his brothers Aaron(Linus Roache) and Miriam(Susan Lynch)confront against Pharaoh Ramses(Paul Rhys) and his fostered brother(Naveen Andrews).Moses asks Pharaoh to liberate them but he refuses, causing the Egyptian plagues : invasion of locusts,fogs ,epidemic,water become in blood and death of the first-born. Moses takes charge of God's people and wrests them from Pharaoh's punishing grip.Moses like liberator of the Jewish leads his people throughout desert battling Malaquitas,Filisteos, and with holy intervention : emerging water hitting on a rock, and dropping divine food. Finally ,Moses climbs the Mount of Sinai bringing the holy tablets, meanwhile Jewish people worshipping the golden calf.This is a monumental version for television of the book of ¨Exodus¨with impressive special effects,including the computer generator parting of the Red Sea; in spite of making by means of usual C.G. ,the effects still look great.The Hebrew lawgiver is well-suited and roughly played by Dougray Scott.Remainder casting play with utter conviction and hold the lengthy movie together.However,the movie,in trimming down for TV miniseries ,it makes lost most really spectacular on the small screen.The picture is suitable for family viewing and religious people. Other adaptations about this story are the classic mute(1923) by Cecil B. DeMille,the second handling and the greatest with a gargantuan scale(1969)played by Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner, Anne Baxter and a TV rendition(1975)by Gianfranco De Bossio with Burt Lancaster and Anthony Quayle.The film is produced by Robert Halmi of ¨Hallmark TV¨ which has produced several movies and series about historical events and famous characters such as : Cleopatra, Odyssea(Ulises),Hercules,Jason and the Argonauts,Joan of Arc,Lion in winter(Henry II and Leonor of Aquitania),Prince and pauper( Henry VIII and Edward VI)..This television movie is professionally directed by Robert Dornhelm , a mini-series expert based on historic personages : Spartacus,Archduke Rudolf and Mary Vetsera, Anne Frank,War and peace and even Rudy Giuliani as Mayor of N.Y..