The Book of Eli

The Book of Eli-2010

The Book of Eli is a film that doesn’t hide its age. A post-apocalyptic America is filled with rubble, hollowed out J. Crew stores are used for shelter and KFC Wet-Naps are Armageddon’s answer to the shower. The world is devoid of any order and only a few remain to fight over remaining water and resources. But in cinematic terms, how many times can the world be destroyed, left to this similar outcome over and over, before it’s impact is dulled? The answer is right about now.

            Denzel Washington is a lone stranger who has been traveling across the United States for 30 years to deliver a book to the people who need it the most. Early on, the book is alluded to as having caused wars, divided people and had the power to control millions. It doesn’t take much to figure out what book it is, but here’s a guess: it’s not Twilight.

            While on his quest, he comes across a shantytown, where he meets Solara, a local barmaid played by Mila Kunis, who wants to leave the town run by her stepdad, Carnegie (Gary Oldman). Carnegie, whose search for the book that Denzel just happens to have, has lead his gang of miscreants (who thankfully, like in every other disaster film, don dreadlocks and goggles, so we know they are bad) to rape and murder their way across the land to find this written word. He knows the power that the book has and wants to use it to lead the people in the way he wants. Yet, Washington, with his lighting quick reflexes and talents with knives, won’t allow him to take the only remaining copy of his book.

            Washington is decent given the material he has to work with, playing the stranger like the end of the world version of Clint Eastwood’s Man Without A Name, while Kunis plays the girl in distress unconvincingly.

It's the end of the world as we know it....once again.

            As the first film from directing team the Hughes brothers in nine years, since From Hell, they go for a sepia-toned world that tries for the apocalypse’s answer to a western, but instead comes off as a poor mash up of I Am Legend, The Road and Mad Max. The movie constantly strives to be something unique, with its idea of “knowledge is power” and an attempt at a Gotcha! ending. But the world, which seems built in sound stages and green screens, unlike the terrifyingly harsh environments of The Road, makes anything genuinely new just seem false.

The Book of Eli’s world is an unbelievable one, even by post-apocalyptic standards. It’s the type of world where Denzel will trade leather gloves to a mechanic played by Tom Waits so that he can have his iPod charged to listen to music for a few hours. Or where one of the most published books of all time is impossible to find, yet copies of “O’ Magazine and “The Da Vinci Code” are easy to find. And that’s a world that even as a viewer, can be quite a bore to be a part of.