Denzel Washington speaks softly and wields a very big knife in The Book of Eli, a stylish post-apocalyptic action tale directed by The Hughes Brothers that essentially serves as an $80 million sermon about the power of Christianity.
Set in America some 30 years after an unspecified cataclysm, it revolves around the attempts of Washington’s title loner to keep the title tome out of the hands of the malevolent mayor (Gary Oldman) of a makeshift town and deliver it to trusted people somewhere on the west coast. Along the way he kills a cat (some of which he feeds to a rat) and blisses out to some melancholy R&B on his iPod.
Where The Road was a grim, minimalist post-apocalyptic drama, this film means to be an epic, in which Washington, who uses the words of the book–which we assume is the Bible–for good, battles Oldman’s power-hungry despot, who wants to use the words as a weapon to keep people in line.
And the Hughes certainly go for an epic feel, bleeding out nearly all the color and showing us beautiful, panoramic shots of the stark landscape and masses of clouds migrating across the sky. They also employ a nicely haunting score that sounds like something out of Blade Runner.
It helps that Washington easily holds your attention, making his hero seem both human yet larger-than-life, and proving that even at 55 he can handle the action stuff. He’s best during the quiet moments, though, like in the scene where he elaborates as to how he came upon the book and learned what he had to do.
The action is well-staged, too, from Washington’s brutal but efficient slicing and dicing of illiterate thugs in various encounters–in particular the brawl in the town’s bar, with the camera fluidly circling the chaos–to Oldman’s attack on the house of an old cannibalistic couple, which involves a Gatling gun and a rocket launcher. And don’t forget about the cars. They flip over or get blown up.
Yet the film, despite the awesome imagery and grand religious overtones, falls short of being an epic, mainly, I think, because it lacks a charismatic villain. This is not the fault of Oldman, a pro at playing bad guys (see: Air Force One), but of the script by Gary Whitta, which has the character do little more, really, than gnash his teeth and yell at his goons to find the book or kill the good guy.
Furthermore, as the daughter of Oldman’s kind but blind mistress (Jennifer Beals), Mila Kunis (That ’70s Show) is excessively whiny, though she does look great in shades. Beals is better, despite getting smacked around a lot. As said old couple, Michael Gambon and Frances de la Tour provide what little color there is, even playing a record of “Ring My Bell” while serving Washington and Kunis tea.
The whole thing ends with a big twist that will make some people scoff but which I never saw coming and thought was pretty neat. The same goes for the brothers’ overall filmmaking style, which includes eschewing flash cuts and giving the movie a nice, measured pace. Imagine that. An action flick that’s not in a hurry. What’s the world coming to? – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]
Action/Adventure/Drama/Thriller/Western
Rated R
DVD Release Date: 6/15/10
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