The Book of Eli

As human history has taught us, religion is a weapon. In the wrong hands, it can be twisted and molded to drive people to a whole litany of atrocities and horrors. Wars have been fought over it. Acts of terror have been committed over it. In the right hands? Religion can provide a measure of hope to the hopeless, comfort to the weary, light in the darkness.

The main characters of The Book of Eli know that really, really well. In this post-apocalyptic future, set 31 years after an event referred to only as "the Flash," Bibles have been destroyed. Religion, you see, was thought to have been the fuel to the Flash's hellfire, and some time after the remnants of society crawled out from their holes, they set to the task of incinerating every copy of scripture that they could find. Of course, they manage to destroy every copy but the one that Eli (Denzel Washington) stumbles upon sometime before the movie begins. And so Eli, spurred by a voice telling him only to go west, starts his long, arduous walk. He is almost a juggernaut in his quest, not deviating from the path, not being stopped by anything in it. He dispatches would-be bandits with vicious and lethal precision, in an almost super-human manner. He seems protected by a force greater than himself. That is, until his iPod runs out of batteries and he runs out of water, forcing him to stop at the nearest barter town. That barter town is run by an eccentric man named Carnegie, played by Gary Oldman at his most manic, who is desperate to get his hands on a single book. He sends out raid parties to bring back any book they can find, and it's not long before we figure out that Carnegie wants Eli's book because religion is a weapon. And with the only copy of the book, Carnegie can go from being the baron of a small barter town to a sort of cult-like leader, able to lead a veritable army of people to do his will.



It's in this main conflict that the movie begins to unravel and fall apart. I give the Hughes brothers, a talented duo that have been missed over the last ten years, credit for a lot of things in this film. For starters, the movie is subtly visually stunning. The atmosphere of the movie is enveloping. We've seen a LOT of post-apocalyptic movies recently. I haven't been completely sold on a single one of them in the same way that I was sold by The Book of Eli. There are reminders of a pre-war past that isn't too far gone practically everywhere. The use of browns and pale greens in the cinematography is a strong effect, and occasionally the camera will pull back for a landscape view that really sells the effect.

This movie, ultimately, is at its best when it's a straight-forward action film with an intelligent undertone. The stylized fight scenes with Denzel Washington at his most ass-kickingest are really a high-point of this movie. Yeah, you feel like you've seen it before, but it doesn't come off as repetitive or cheap in this film. In a very early fight scene, Eli steps back into the shadows of an overpass, allowing you to see only the silhouette of the vicious and bloody fight scene. It's an effect that's almost Tarantino in execution, but it doesn't feel out of place here.

Where the movie fails is when it starts to shrug off its intelligent tone and turn into a standard action movie that's more than happy to beat you over the head with its premise. After building up a very engaging and almost unique premise, the movie begins to preach about the power of the book and the power of religion. And while that's happening, the movie devolves into a pretty standard chase flick. It seems like a cop out from a movie that offers so much in its first hour. The Book of Eli takes itself very seriously. It wants you to take it very seriously as well. It fails to accomplish that when it drifts back into a fairly formulaic and lackluster second half. Even with a semi-twist ending that, to be honest, you'd have to be blind not to catch, the movie takes all of the originality that the first half sets forth and squanders it in a film that's far less intelligent than what it aspires to be.

There's a good solid foundation here and it's fantastic to see the Hughes brothers back in the movie making business. If only the movie that resulted was worthy of the foundation that was laid.