2.5 stars (out of 5)
Aussie-residing producer/director Alex Proyas’ first film since 2009’s po-facedly apocalyptic Knowing is equally silly but more enjoyable, with a rampant sense of absurdity that forgiving punters might find divinely funny.
Drawn vaguely from some kind of myth, this has a prologue explaining that (for some reason or other) gods lived amongst mortals back in Ancient Egypt (actually Sydney studios and sometimes outback NSW), and were distinguishable by their huge size (10 or 12 feet, by the look of it), gold blood and the fact that they’re played by sometimes bizarrely-cast stars. Human Bek (Brenton Thwaites) and his gal-pal Zaya (Courtney Eaton) are big fans of god Horus (sour old Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), and set off to a huge FX gathering where the peaceful Egyptians wait to see Horus be crowned by no less than his beloved Dad Osiris (who’s played, hilariously enough, by an Ocker Bryan Brown!).
However, Horus’ jealous brother Set (Gerard Butler trying to conceal his Irish accent again) turns up, seizes power himself and plucks out Horus’ eyes, and later we find Egypt’s mortals mostly enslaved and any god who talks back to Set treated harshly. The ridiculously lucky Bek decides that he’s going to help Horus, who’s now blind and wallowing in misery (as only Coaster-Waldau can), and after grabbing the god’s eyes in a cheesy trap-filled chamber, he and Horus set out to stop Set doing any more damage to Egypt (or Butler’s reputation).
Fantasy epics like this, complete with their reams of FX animation, are normally tedious and infuriating, but in Proyas’ hands this is at times moderately entertaining, with a lumbering Sphinx, a sneering Anubis, cobra-dragons, suspiciously Star Wars-like battles, an amusing turn by Rufus Sewell (of Proyas’ Dark City) as a sucking-up-to-the-gods architect and, as Horus’ granddad Ra, no less than Geoffrey Rush (!!!) having a pleasingly hammy time. There’s also a ‘controversial’ lack of Egyptian actors (see also Exodus: Gods And Kings, which was similarly overflowing with Caucasians), but to worry about that is to take this supreme silliness far more seriously than it deserves. Goddamn indeed.
I Wake Up Screening 