Movie Review: The Book of Eli (spoiler alert)

The landscape and story behind The Book of Eli is sparse. Its lunar-like landscape adds an air of desperation that you know is coming.  There are no lush colors or bright moments in this film. It is dark and gets darker. Directors Albert and Allen Hughes spin an Apocalypse with no catastrophe!

Eli and the Bible are the stars of this show. And Denzel Washington’s Eli is a tall, tan, taciturn, killing machine. He dispatches his enemies and stalkers with bow and arrow, machete, and Lugar.  His sidekick is an illiterate, skinny white girl Solara (Mila Kunis) whom he rescues from a life of lust as she is pimped out by her mother’s boyfriend Carnegie. Gary Oldman’s Carnegie is a delicious villain. He is not all bad because he wants to possess the book that Eli protects with his life.

Mom is Jennifer Beals. She is blind.  Once the happy lesbian in The L Word is now the angst-ridden handmaiden of a madman who is looking for “the book.”  That book is the  King James Version of the Bible. Here’s where The Book of Eli gets preachy–fast. I am not sure if the R rating is to warn us of the wholesale violence that streams through this movie or warning that you will believe that the good book is the source of civilization. And it is the root of man’s humanity, goodness and rebirth.

Unlike the movie 2012 the viewer spared the special effects that lead to the end times that begin in a desert and end at Alcatraz in the San Francisco Bay.  No kidding. I recognized the Island, the Bay and the Golden Gate bridges from my trip there this summer. That made me feel better toward the end of the movie. Even I began to believe the spin and saw a glimmer of hope at the end of the last printing press in the world (I’m guessing).

Since we are spared the detail of destruction we must imagine what happened until Eli fills in the blanks with Solara. This film is painfully short on detail and long on murder in macabre style. Eli walks the desert (New Mexico).  He recounts how he has walked for 30 years since “the war.” This opens into one scene where Eli opens up about “life before” and “the sky opened up” and “The flash.” That sums up the detail of  what happened.

The landscape is strewn with the wreckage of life before where everyone has too much. Survivors, a few, cannot read and cannot recall the meaning of morality. The practice murder, rape and looting. That is their faith, their religion in the new world.

Eli however is no paragon of virtue. He too must kill to survive. But above all he must stay true to “the path.” Whatever that is. Perhaps this is one positive critique about The Book of Eli. That the viewer gets to imagine his own reasons for the end of the world.  Did people have to change because the script lines read “People threw away more than  they needed?” “Or what people kill for now was simply thrown away in the past?” Solara gets to contemplate these pearls of wisdom from Eli on the road. Solara enthralled joins his mission to place the book in safe keeping to jumpstart the world. You guessed it–this movie totally lacks originality and a well-told story in a time when folks are hungry for well, the end.  

If you are long on imagination with  little tolerance for talking heads then this is your kind of movie.

Ending Spoiler:

Eli it turns out is blind. And the Bible he is carrying around is in Braile. So he must dictate the contents of Eli’s book to the people in, where else but San Franciso, who have a huge library and printing press. They take down his dictation and print the book, The Bible, and put it on the shelf. Then Eli is shaved and dressed and white while he is dictating the book.

How I would have done The Book of Eli

If I were doing this movie I would have them be the two witnesses. And have them as lovers: one Christian and on a Buddhist monk. The monk returns from Tibetan and the world ends. The two witnesses roam the world just before the end predicting it.  The monk returns to his Christian roots when he realizes that he and his woman are the two witnesses who fulfill the book of Revelation.