Starring Denzel Washington as Eli, Mila Kunis as a young girl who begins as a pain-in-the-ass and winds up being his successor and protégé and Gary Oldman as a badland town overlord, Book of Eli is a very interesting film. The reviews have been decidedly mixed, some claiming it's the best movie of 2009(If it had come out two week earlier) others claiming it's a mess. The reason why is not a mystery, Book of Eli is, by the time it's done, the most decidedly Christan themed movie in years. If you get all pissed-off at that kind of theme, you'll get pissed off at the movie. It's surprising that Book of Eli wanders into that territory because it starts as a run-of -the mill, albeit very high-caliber, post apocalyptic road movie.
In the not-too-distant future, some 30 years after the final war, a solitary man walks across the wasteland that was once America. Empty cities, broken highways, seared earth--all around him, the marks of catastrophic destruction. There is no civilization here, no law. The roads belong to gangs that would murder a man for his shoes, an ounce of water...or for nothing at all.
Denzel meets gangs of them, tries to be peaceful but generally smokes and hacks to death the badland raiders. If you've played Fallout 3, that's what the backdrop of the movie is like.
Eli stops in a town and comes to face with Gary Oldman and his gang of baddies who run the town since they control the water supply. But there's more to both of these characters than what might appear. Oldman sends convoys of his troops out to find books, even thought they can't read, hoping they'll stumble on a bible. See, hoards of people blamed the good book for starting the war in the first place, hence, all the bibles were destroyed soon after the apocalypse. All, it seems, except one, carried and read daily, by Eli. Oldman wants a bible so he can twist the message to control simple folk to do his bidding. Eli cryptically claims he's been told by God to take the Bible "west".
That's all I'm going to tell about what is a intriguing plot line in screenwriter Gary Whitta's script, other than to say, there is, a brilliant twist or two in the 3rd act.
The actor's all handle the material well, even Kunis. The world post-war of directors the Hughes brothers is well portrayed, with busted freeways and dead buildings. Of special note is a really wonderfully handled firefight at a lone house in the middle of nothingness where a cannibalistic senior citizen pair live.
Where Eli strained for me, was right at the end, where the Christian theme, which I though was handled extremely well in Denzel's kick-ass crusader, gets heavy-handed and repetitive in the last ten minutes. If they'd cut eighty percent of that and relied on cinematic moments instead of blatant voice-over narration, it would have been a better movie.
Still, it is very good, with white-hot devastation, fine acting and an intriguing well though-out plot.
Rating:
Presentation: 30 believable post-war world
Character: 28 good acting and characters
Plot: 28- great, though heavy-handed at end
Overall: 86
