摩西(克里斯蒂安·贝尔 Christian Bale 饰)和法老拉美西斯二世(乔尔·埃哲顿 Joel Edgerton 饰)是情同手足的好兄弟,彼此之间感情十分要好。摩西得到了神的旨意,决心将成千上万的犹太人民从水深火热的生活之中解救出来,他向拉美西斯寻求帮助,然而,这位好友却十分坚决地拒绝了他。不仅如此,拉美西斯还对犹太人进行了惨无人道的屠杀。
为了惩罚拉美西斯的暴行,神在埃及降下了“十灾”,一时间,埃及陷入了混乱与死亡的阴影之中,然而,拉美西斯并没有因此而有所醒悟,最终,他和摩西成为了宿敌。摩西知道何为自己的使命,他带领着四十万希伯来人踏上了漫漫旅途,寻找一片属于他们的家园。
Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman), a worn-out private detective, is hired to look for a 16-year-old girl who has run away from the luxury home of her mother, formerly a small-time actress in Los Angeles. The more the weary cynic tries to get under the surface of the seemingly simple case, the harder it is for him to find his bearings among the lies and deceptions that surround him. Eight years after the key New Hollywood film Bonnie and Clyde, Arthur Penn and Gene Hackman reunited to collaborate on what was to become one of the most undervalued films of the decade. Like Polanski in Chinatown or Altman in The Long Goodbye, in his revisionist film noir, Penn also allows the 1940s classic genre to pervade the complex reality of the 1970s. The feelings of bitterness and emptiness in the modern Chandleresque protagonist originate not only in the “public” sphere of the strange, increasingly convoluted case, but in his private life as well (boyhood trauma, a broken marriage). As Moseby remarks of a sporting event, “nobody’s winning … one side is just losing slower than the other.”