toddly6666

If you lower your expectations, Erik Matti's EXODUS isn't all that bad, especially if you consider the movie's characteristics:

1. the quality of the film is somewhere between a Xena/Hercules/Beastmaster-type tv episode and a big budget straight-to-video movie that you would see at 10:30 PM on the Sci-Fi channel.

2. The main aspects of the film were influenced from other films such as: the costumes/masks from Gladiator/The Promise/Kingdom of Heaven/Braveheart; the walking-around road-trip storyline of Lord of the Rings; the machinery/underground people/costumes from City of Lost Children, Mad Max, Waterworld

I was glad that EXODUS felt more like a first feature at a level of like an early Sam Raimi film than like his previous amatuerish movie PERDITO PERDENKO EPISODE 2, which felt like an awful Troma movie. But EXODUS is still awkwardly edited, and there are many unnecessary shots of the main actors. The acting in Filipino movies are at a similar but different level of Bollywood actors. Bollywood actors have the potential to be good actors if they didn't overact. But in Filipino movies, I get the impression that no one is an actor and they are just doing their best acting as a non-actor can do. That's how it felt watching EXODUS. Either way, for non-professional actors, the EXODUS cast isn't that bad. If anything, EXODUS captures the cheese level of early 80s sword & sorcerer movies such as Beastmaster, Red Sonja, Conan.

As I mentioned about, the special effect are at a level of a big budget TV movie. Some are good and some are bad, but definitely more of a TV feel than a cinematic feel. The action isn't all that great as shown in the trailer. The trailer certainly makes it look like an awesome action movie, but it's not so. The action scenes are not bad, but they are quick cut and amateurishly edited at times.

As I got my EXODUS DVD in the mail and was pleased to see it had a decent DVD cover and back. The EXODUS font on the DVD spine was very nice looking, in a Troy/Gladiator-type epic style. The DVD back states 4:3 and English subtitles, but surprisingly the DVD is non-anamorphic letterboxed and it's just good quality for what's offered. There are no scratches or heads popping up at the bottom (as with previous filipino dvds). If you zoom and fill the whole screen of your HDTV, there will be more apparent ghosting and blurring and tv lines shown. The audio is Filipino and I have no idea of how it was mixed. It sounded like a pretty good Dolby Surround mix. My subwoofer was active and the surrounds were a bit active as well. The english subtitles were very good and it was nice that the subtitles are within the picture and not on the bottom black area, so that when you zoom the video in to fit your HDTV, you don't lose any subtitles or have to mess up the ratio of the picture to get them to fit. For extras, there is only the awesome letterboxed trailer.

For this type of genre movie, it's a fair movie. For a big budget Filipino movie, it's a movie that is a positive direction for Filipino action films. If you are curious, check it out. But it's easily skippable and you won't be missing anything.

FILM: 6.5
DVD VIDEO: 6.5
DVD AUDIO: 7
EXTRAS: 1