Unreal Movie Review: The Book of Eli

The Book of Eli is an allegory, but not one you’d easily guess. Rather, I view it as a portrait of the slate of awful, half-finished, mangled winter movies we as moviegoers have to trudge through in order to reach the promised land of summer blockbusters. Eli is supposed to be an oasis in this ravaged desert, but all it manages to be instead is a rusty tasting drink from a thirty year old Dasani bottle, which we chug quickly and throw away before returning to our seemingly endless journey.

Eli (Denzel Washington) is a man on a mission, and in this nightmarish future must walk his way across the entire nation, protecting a book that he sees as the savior of humankind via its power to guide through troubling times and bring hope to the despairing. Along the way, he encounters a new-world despot (Gary Oldman), a local mayor who wants the same book, but plans to use its power to enslave the weak minded and desperate.

It shouldn’t come as any surprise to learn that this book is the Bible, which is quickly revealed in the film, and film is meant to show the dichotomy of both the constructive and destructive effects religion can have on civilization. What IS a surprise however, is that the movie claims there is only ONE Bible left in the world, as the apocalypse and anti-religious survivors have wiped all remaining copies. Issues of Oprah’s “O” magazine and 2009 prints of “The Da Vinci Code” keep turning up, but no Bibles, which is pretty impressive considering it’s the most widely printed book on earth every single year by a mile.

Eli and the despot clash over the book, and Eli proves himself one hell of a fighter with the ability to singlehandedly dismantle entire legions of raiders without a suffering a scratch. He’s so good in fact, it seems that he might have a bit more helping him than simple suburb movie choreography. The despot wants to know why this is, and becomes further enraged when his de facto daughter (Mila Kunis) runs away to follow Eli on his cross-country journey.

“Yeah since Batman you forgot I could be an evil dick didn’t you?”

The Book of Eli is perhaps the most unoriginal vision of the post apocalyptic future I’ve seen in some time. The earth has simply been destroyed by war, almost everyone died, and society lies in tattered ruins with roving bandit tribes and power hungry madmen running things. There’s very little mystery as to the circumstances of earth’s destruction, the war “tore a hole in the sky” which caused the sun to light the entire planet on fire. Most interestingly perhaps is the fact that nukes and radiation are never once mentioned, something that seems out of place for a desolate, lifeless world such as this.

But we’ve seen it all before. The world has essentially reverted back to the Wild West, with only a few minor nonsensical tweaks, like gasoline that’s still refined thirty years later in towns without running water and first generation iPods can still hold a lasting charge.

As for the whole religious debate in the film, it’s the most interesting part to be sure, but the characters involved with the conflict are just too uninteresting to make us care, the most unfortunate example of this being Eli himself. It’s hard to remember Denzel uttering more than a dozen odd lines in the entire movie, most of them along the lines of “I don’t want no trouble” (before butchering a bar full of creeps) or “You can’t come with me” (to Mila Kunis before she comes with him) or “I walk by faith” (before trudging toward California despite the fact he could have shaved twenty nine years off his trip if he bothered to utilize one of the surprisingly large amount of working cars lying around).

“Lord, if it is in your plan for this girl to take her dress off right now, then let your will be done.”

Gary Oldman is an equally un-dimensional villain, with his propensity to hurt women making him an all-too-easy asshole to hate. And when he spells out the fact that he believes all religious people are idiotic sheep to be manipulated, it’s a little like a James Bond villain spilling his final plan right before 007 escapes and dismantles his evil fortress.

Mila Kunis was clearly cast in this role for her ability to look absolutely stunning without a drop of makeup, which no longer exists post-apocalypse, but I was pleasantly surprised to see her hold her own dramatically, and was impressed the film resisted sexualizing her character or forcing her into an awkward and out of place romance with Eli.

Marry me!

Despite all its gore and machine gun fire, Eli is pretty damn boring, and feels like one episode of a Showtime miniseries rather than a movie all to itself. The film ends with a plot twist that’s equal parts surprising and irritating and rather than contemplating philosophical messages of the film afterward, will have you retracing scenes in the film, trying to fill in plot holes caused by the twist.

The Book of Eli just doesn’t bring anything new to the table, and what it does rehash has been done more interestingly before by other films and hell, even many video games. I’d rather roam around the Wasteland in Fallout 3 for two hours, as I know I’d have more interesting adventures than Denzel did.

2.5 out of 5 stars