The recent box-office pattern of apocalypse movies shows that people are no longer content with seeing destruction on a small scale. This comes as no surprise ? these movies invoke the natural commercial appeal of extreme hunger, long periods of walking and old people getting sexually abused by motorcyclists. The latest addition to this trend, “The Book of Eli,” may seem fundamentally similar to prior releases “2012” and “The Road,” but it distinguishes itself with two key elements: The Holy Bible and Denzel Washington.
Newcomer screenwriter Gary Whitta brings very little apocalyptic context to “The Book of Eli.” Throughout the movie, all we really know is that it takes place 30 years after the incident which is described variously as a “blast” that was “large” and also “bright.” This isn’t concerning at all, however, because the movie has nothing to do with the effects of this blast, but rather the journey of Eli (Denzel Washington,”The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3″).
Like the Blues Brothers before him, Eli is on a mission from God, told by his faith to travel west where he must bring the last remaining copy of the Bible. Also like the Blues Brothers, he must kill all those that violently oppose him. His troubles start when he stops in a repopulated ghost down meets Carnegie (Gary Oldman “The Unborn”), one of the few remaining literate survivors, discovers that he possesses the King James Bible and attempts to steal it from him. What follows is essentially a journey between different set pieces with all sorts of dying taking place.
Washington, (arguably the best part of the movie) remains stoic for the entire movie, rarely speaking more than a sentence. Oldman makes it very clear that he is the villain of the movie because he is almost always screaming. The time taken away from actual character development is leant to stylized action sequences — a particularly engaging one involves Eli and newly acquired companion Solara (Mila Kunis, “Extract”) taking shelter in the house of two crazy old people with an improbable amount of weapons.
If that all sounds fairly standard, it is. But directors Allen and Albert Hughes (“From Hell”) do a respectable job keeping the movie entertaining and, for the most part, compelling. The entire movie is given heavy atmospheric effect with a desaturated color palette and heavy light contrast, and the movie also makes liberal use of slow-motion effects and zoom-ins on Washington’s emotionless face.
Unfortunately, the reliance on these effects often gives the movie the feel of a shampoo commercial from hell. The continuous use of montages and heavily stylized action sequences come off as something that would fit in better with a television advertisement or a video game cutscene, which is invariably what the movie often feels like. And while it’s inarguable that everybody wants to see Washington walk and kill people in slow motion, the artificial feel of those scenes, along with the pounding industrial soundtrack, robs the film of any kind of real serious weight it might have obtained from restricting itself to a sense of grittiness or austerity.
Much will probably be made of the movies seemingly explicit religious overtones. However, the movie isn’t really about the importance of Christianity but rather the importance of some kind of unifying general faith in desperate times. It’s a theme found in a multitude of movies before this one, but “The Book of Eli” uses it to pretty mild inspirational effect as the movie draws to an unexpected twist ending.
But the problem then, is the movie doesn’t ever find stable ground on the type of movie it wants to be. Parts of the movie in which Eli explains the importance of the Bible as a mechanism to bring hope to people are barely developed, and they ring hollow when we realize that, in the scene immediately beforehand, he shot an arrow through a man’s penis. On a more emotional level, it creates conflicting feelings when we’re forced to reconcile the movie’s righteous aspirations with its use of slow motion explosions and western-style gun fights. Basically, the movie’s emphasis on its philosophy seems weird when the primary plot device, and really, the focus of the movie, is violence as entertainment.
Which isn’t to say that “The Book of Eli” isn’t exciting ? it’s definitely worth watching, at least for the entertainment value. But the movie’s inability to decide between its artistic and commercial pursuits ultimately render the development of the former aspect extraneous and leaves the “The Book of Eli” as a movie that is action-packed, well-acted, well-directed, well-paced and forgettable.
3 stars out of 5.
