Exodus

Otto Preminger didn't know it, but back in 1960 he invented the TV mini-series. His epic (213 minutes) adaptation of Leon Uris's bestseller about the struggle to found the modern Israeli state has all the ingredients: an uplifting theme (by Ernest Gold); a modern re-enactment of the original Exodus, with Paul Newman leading a shipload of displaced Jews out of Cyprus and into Palestine; a host of characters only God could keep track of; a sweet-but-doomed teenage couple (as compensation we get a big smooch for Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint atop Mount Tabor); a few Mission Impossible-type rescue sequences; and plot holes bigger than the parting of the Red Sea.

Along the way we get some idea of what the British (making their usual mess) were up against, as well as insight into the talk-versus-action conflict between the Haganah and the Irgun; and there's a treacly-but-touching look at a youth village in the Huleh Valley. Newman is effective if sometimes perplexingly American; Eva Marie Saint is earnest but brittle; everyone suffers from the lame dialogue (Uris's book is an addictive read but a terrible novel). And the Palestinian Arab point of view goes largely unrepresented -- but hey, this is a Hollywood movie, did The Ten Commandments worry about giving Pharaoh equal time? What works is the Jewish refugee children, whose incarnation of the Promised Land would have even God smiling at the end of this three-and-a-half-hour melodrama.

-- Jeffrey Gantz