By Jason Apuzzo. The pitch: Samurai-style warrior Denzel Washington wanders the post-apocalyptic wasteland carrying the last Bible on Earth. His mission, given to him in a vision, is to carry the Bible west to where a last remnant of civilized humanity can preserve it for generations to come. Standing in his way is Gary Oldman – the corrupt, tinpot dictator of a Wild West-style town who wants to use Denzel’s Bible for his own nefarious ends. And caught in the middle, fetchingly, is young prostitute Mila Kunis, who must choose between leaving town with Denzel or remaining in the purgatorial, Dodge City hell of Gary Oldman’s harem …
What works:
• Denzel. His star power, and the compelling mixture of ruthlessness and humanity he brings to the role, are the best things the film has going for it. He’s very watchable, particularly in the film’s quieter moments.
• The stylized look and feel of the post-apocalyptic wasteland. Although the wasteland in Eli isn’t the riotous spectacle that The Road Warrior‘s badlands were, it has a dark, menacing sobriety to it that works well given the film’s theme.
• The basic premise of the film is strong, and holds it together through some clunky sequences.
What doesn’t work:
• For the umpteenth time in his career, Gary Oldman isn’t given enough to do other than sneer. His final face-off with Denzel is anti-climactic in the extreme.
• The film can’t decide whether it’s a kick-ass action thriller, or a serious meditation on Christian faith. As a result, it ends up being neither.
• Female lead Mila Kunis is too mousy to play sexy … yet too sexy to play mousy. As a result, she ends up being neither.
The Book of Eli – which is newly out this week on DVD, Blu-Ray and Amazon download (see the LFM Store below) – is really a Western, pure and simple. My sense is that the film might actually have done better if it hadn’t tried to be some sort of Christian allegory, but had instead depicted Denzel transporting something more mundane across the post-apocalyptic wasteland … like maybe Julia Child’s Joy of Cooking. I’m only half-kidding saying that, because the problem with this film – directed by the Hughes brothers – is that it just takes itself far too seriously. A little humor would’ve helped matters greatly, because the film’s low budget and somewhat ham-handed action sequences are actually far below what we’ve come to expect from big Hollywood action spectacles. If you come looking for Mad Max, you’re not going to get it in this film. At the same time, you’re not really getting The Seventh Seal, either. What you’re getting is something that’s passably entertaining, and modestly thoughtful, but not nearly as cathartic as it could be.
On balance, though, I wish that Hollywood made a lot more pictures of this sort – because with the apocalypse seemingly getting closer by the day, I really need to know what to wear once the bombs start dropping. And I love Denzel’s shades.
[Special note to Christian audiences of this film: it’s Rated R and is very violent. Viewer discretion definitely advised.]
Posted on June 16th, 2010 at 11:07pm.
I would have been interested in this film just because Denzel is in it, but the idea of extreme violence is a turn-off. Also, why do all these post-apocalyptic films look the same? Grey, vacant, grimy…
As someone who’s tussled with the screenwriter on message boards (he used to write about video games and he still writes comics), you rightly refused to overestimate the depths of his theological or religious understanding. Dreadful stuff.
Wow, that’s great to know. Yes, I really could not fathom what the guy was trying to say – until I realized that there was no point. So far as I could tell, the Bible could easily have been interchanged in this film with the Koran.
I appreciate the serious tone of the movie and I actually like the fact that it was subdued from both ends of the spectrum. I didn’t want it to be just another Mad Max with nothing to really drive it other than the movement from one action scene to another. I was also glad that there was no Thunderdome and mostly civilization was kept recognizable, though perverted. I also appreciated that the theology, clearly an idea not given deep thought by the screen writer, was also subdued in that it allowed my imagination to fill in the blanks that they did not. I realize that the movie actually asked no questions, but it didn’t stop me from thinking about how the Book of Eli would become another of the books in the Bible and how and if divine intervention guided him through the town and how the process of hearing God’s word occurred and so on and so on.
The only part of the movie I didn’t like was the ending with Mila Kunis.
SPOILER ALERT
I understand the idea that she has been converted and thus is going out to spread the Good Word, but the fact that she did so by pretending to be a new Eli was wholly unbelievable. They tried to make her appear savvy and resourceful when she escaped her captors, but I never bought it. I actually laughed a little in the theater.
I enjoyed this movie when I saw it in the theater, but after thinking it over, I have one minor quibble and two major issues with it.
To get the quibble out of the way, I didn’t buy the big reveal about Eli in the end. I won’t go into spoiler territory, but I thought it was too clever by half, and unnecessary. But I can let that slide.
What I can’t accept is the premise that there are no Bibles to be had anywhere. The movie suggests that after society collapsed, there was some sort of reaction against religion, or at least that people were too concerned with survival to worry about literacy. But it’s a basic fact of human nature that a crisis will make people more likely to seek meaning, and religion is the primary vector for that. The Christian religion and the Bible would be the *last* thing that would be lost. Not to mention that the Bible ubiquitous – I can’t believe that every copy has suddenly vanished or been destroyed. It’s flatly implausible, and no suspension of disbelief can cover it.
Unless you’re Hollywood liberal, of course. My other major problem with the film is that it’s making a statement about faith, but faith seems to be an end in itself. It’s not directed toward anything. The people involved with this movie like spirituality, but not religion. They just don’t seem to know how to ‘seal the deal’ with regards to Eli’s faith journey. It’s oddly sterile. There’s no sense that the Bible is uniquely worth preserving. I get the sense that the movie could just as well have been made with the collected works of Shakespeare as the macguffin. The movie is trying to make a statement about faith, but they ‘still haven’t found what they’re looking for.’