The Hughes Brothers are back baby and in fine fashion. I really wasn’t in the mood to see a movie today, and certainly not a post apocalyptic one. I’ll admit I was ready to walk out ten minutes into The Book of Eli but the movie’s slow pacing actually sucked me in. As Eli (Denzel Washington) walks this dirty, dank, desolate world we see how low humanity has sunk and the mystery of who this man is deepens. This movie is literally and figuratively about faith on all levels – faith in God, faith in your fellow man, faith in the will to survive. It’s a message movie that doesn’t try to beat you over the head with its religious overtones – ok, it does, but for some reason I didn’t mind it as much and I’m a borderline Atheist.
Denzel’s grizzled, bearded face is shown off in full glory as the Directors gave their star numerous loving close-ups and it works because Denzel commands the screen, the first 1/2 hour of this movie reminds me of Will Smith‘s post apocalyptic film I Am Legend. Like that film this one spends the first 1/2 hour with Denzel being alone in this world. We see him read from his mysterious book, hunt for food, brush his teeth and listen to his iPod. Wait, what is an iPod doing in a Post Apocalyptic movie? It took a good 10 or 15 minutes for me to let that go.
Once we find out what it takes to live in this broken world, the film picks up when Denzel starts walking the walk and encounters the dreads of humanity. The things we used to throw away like KFC sanitation wraps, gloves, water etc. are now highly coveted bargaining chips. On his Journey he comes across a town run by a man – Carnegie (Gary Oldman), who is obsessed with finding this mysterious book that he says will give him the words to rule the world. People will flock to him once he’s able to speak it. After sending his henchmen out to find the book, he’s in luck when Eli walks into his bar and in standard movie coincidence fashion Eli has the book he wants.
At this point the film goes from being a character study about faith and Eli to becoming a generic Mad Max style action movie. The action scenes were few and far between but they came at the right moments and didn’t drag on and on. It was good, but I couldn’t get away from the idea that I’ve seen this before. Mila Kunis is quite good in this as one of the women Carnegie uses and abuses, she latches herself onto Eli and sees him as her ticket out of that town and joins him on his quest to get the book to the west coast.
A few weeks ago a lot of idiot Conservatives whined about how “Liberal” Avatar was, well you can rest easy because The Book of Eli is a film tailor made for Conservatives. So rejoice, Hollywood has made a movie that the Religious Right can like. It’s weird, this is the type of film I’d expect from Mel Gibson, not Denzel. I’m purposely not going to talk about Eli’s book, I don’t want to give away a major spoiler – although the movie doesn’t take that long to tell you what Eli’s book is and why it has the power to change the world. I love movies that are about the written word (and other creative endeavors) and shows us how the pen can bring about great change – as a writer it sort of fills me with hope. After a pretty rough beginning, this movie really snuck up on me and grabbed my attention by having a nice blend of good acting, story, and action in just to right places.
Final Grade A-
EM Review by
Michelle Alexandria
Originally posted 01.15.2010
