No, it is not about Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt, “Exodus” instead focuses on more recent Jewish history. The formation of the modern state of Israel is seen as a very religiously significant event by both Jews and Christians but this film is a little bit of bore.

In 1947, a Haganah leader (Paul Newman “The Sting”) defies the British to help some of the Jews detained in Cyprus to reach their destination of British Mandate Palestine. Once in their ancestral homeland, the creation of a Jewish state looks to be on the horizon but the Arabs will not tolerate its existence.

One of the most irritating aspects of “Exodus” is that much of the film follows an American woman by the name of Kitty (Eva Marie Saint “North By Northwest”). This is her not her fight and this is not her home so why have this irrelevant character as a major player? The character becomes a real distraction. The other characters are also really boring. I think the film does a reasonable job presenting the British as I feel it is a fair portrayal. I also like the way that the film does not seek to glorify the more extreme Zionist groups such as the Irgun.

“Exodus” is unsure of what to be. It clocks in at well over three hours but cannot decide whether it wants to focus on the conflict or do a more “Gone With The Wind” sort-of thing. This is surely one of the most interesting events in the years after World War II yet while “Exodus” is not a bad film, it just never conveys how important the establishment of Israel was. If you want a better movie on the subject matter, I do not believe I have seen one so if you want to see a film about the birth of Israel then this will have to do.