The Book of Eli Movie Review

By Eddy

Much like Denzel Washington’s newest film out on in theaters I am going to get straight to the point. The film was ok.  Directed by the Hughes brothers of Menace to Society and Fame , their latest effort leaves me a bit bored and ultimately unsatisfied.    It is hard to categorize this movie, is it a religious movie, is it a supernatural or sci-fi thriller?  It’s a bit of both.  While it feeds off two wildly popular genre’s religion and apocalyptic thriller it feels like it is lacking in both areas.  There is an unfinished quality in the story as well as the directing and acting.

The film follows Eli 30 years after some apocalyptic event (of which we learn nothing about as well as its after affects) which leave the entire U.S. and assumedly the world in a Road Warrior/Mad Max type of waste land.  In the middle of it, Eli is traveling by foot across the country with the only bible in existence (they were all burned as the cause of all the destruction).  On his journey west (which was dictated to him by some otherworldly voice in his head) he arrives at a small town ruthlessly owned by a supposed Mayor (an over the top Gary Oldman basically playing his character in The Fifth Element ) and his cronies who rule by fear and violence (similar to Gene Hackman in The Quick and The Dead ).

Looking to use the book for his own means, the Mayor attempts to capture and take the book away from Eli.  During this time Eli meets a companion in Solara (Mila Kunis) who he reluctantly at first takes with him on the rest of his journey.

We meet on Eli’s journey the various denizens of this new world, which consist mainly of your fairly typical Mad Max character (bad teeth, dirty, proto-punk clothing, and a nasty habit of rape, murder and cannibalism).  We also meet a couple of quirky and severely deranged personalities that serve to space out the Mad Max’ers and their unadulterated violence.

My main problem as I said earlier is that the film just feels incomplete.  This may be in part to not knowing exactly what caused the great destruction or exactly what was the effect of the aftermath, apparently one of which was cannibalism.  The Hughes brother constantly hint at other things but fail to give the audience most of the pieces to put everything together and what information we do obtain from the characters are basically thow away lines, while feel as if they were forced in just to throw the audience a bone.  I was left trying to figure out things that really had nothing to do with the central plot of the movie which ultimately made things more confusing that they should have been.

Add in also, the stock characters that filled the scenes as well as the miss use of Mila Kunis in the movie.  Why was she there?  She wasn’t eye candy and she didn’t seem to move the plot nor the lead character either.  It wasn’t as if Mila’s character convinced Eli to either abandon or continue his journey, if you erased her character from the movie I am pretty certain nothing would have changed in the plot.  Actually at the end of the movie I was pretty convinced that she wouldn’t survive in the world that she was living in..

When you boil it down this should have been an action movie, but with all that was going on, the action just seemed to take a back seat to the questions and that is with some of the action being some what impressive especially with a 50 year old Denzel doing most of the work.  As befitting a movie of this caliber the acting was really nothing to talk about.  Most of Denzel’s lines were either grunts or lines of scripture, and while Oldman was at his craziest regrettably it wasn’t anything that we haven’t see before nor does it surpass anything he has done previously.  Though I am hesitant to blame this strictly on Oldman as he has performed admirably lately in his other films such as the Dark Knight .  As before, we can really consider Mila’s character a background prop like a lampshade or a very beautiful phone or cuckoo clock but an actual defined character seem a bit of a stretch.

Actually I am quite surprised that Denzel Washington was even in the film, whether it was a contractual obligation or the opportunity to work with relatively famous African American Directors I would have at least have thought that he would have demanded a higher quality product.  Then again, when your film comes out in January and is competing with Award Winning films such as Legion and the Tooth Fairy it isn’t surprising to think that some executive thought that Denzel’s name recognition would pull in a few butts into the theater.  Considering that the film came in second place to the behemoth that is Avatar to the tune of 60 million dollars as of the date I am writing this, it looks as if the Suits were right.

In the end, I just felt that there was too many holes and there not enough entertaining filler to make the film whole, add in, the fact the story itself needed a bit more detail you can certainly understand why I felt less than satisfied when leaving the theater.

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