Book of Eli: Movie Review

I love the end of the world. It’s what keeps me going in this day and age, and whenever I feel down, it’s great to stick on my copy of A Boy and His Dog (1975), Escape from New York (1981) or Mad Max 2 (1981), and revel in the fact that, despite unemployment, poverty and the continued dominance of reality television, the world isn’t this bad. Book of Eli is the new film from the Hughes brothers, directors of the critically acclaimed Menace II Society (1993) and the largely misunderstood From Hell (2001), it takes place in a post apocalyptic world where plot and character development have almost died out.

Years after an unspecified war, a war that burnt and scarred the landscape of America, and left most of the population either blind or dead, Eli (Denzel Washington) travels the wasteland heading only ‘west’, to find a place to keep safe the titular book that he carries with him. After arriving in a small settlement, Eli is accosted in a bar by some thugs, and after a fight he stands the victor, only to be offered a job by the bar’s owner Carnegie (Gary Oldman). Refusing, Eli takes shelter in the settlement, and Carnegie finds out that the book he carries is the one that he has wanted for years, and a game of cat and mouse begins.

The film began really well, I mean really well. The fight scenes were fabulous, the look of the world that the characters inhabited looked great and Eli’s quiet spoken hero reminded me of the Clint Eastwood ‘man-with-no-name’ characters in Segio Leone’s Dollar’s trilogy. Once Eli arrives at Carnegie’s bar however, things start to go downhill extraordinarily quickly. Gary Oldman is a wonderful actor, and I’m sure I would have enjoyed his performance more if he hadn’t spent the entire film mumbling, the Mila Kunis character is just awful, and the supporting cast try their best, but the religious overtones of the film drown what was initially an interesting plot and kill whatever tension and mystery there was about Eli. The themes of the preservation of knowledge and literature are all fine and good, but the attitude with which the Hughes brothers approach religious morality is extraordinarily naïve. Actors are wasted, not only the aforementioned Gary Oldman but Michael Gambon appears too, for the briefest five minutes or so; and even Malcolm McDowall turns up at the end. So many great actors, such a well trodden and fun premise, why did they have waste the film focussed on the ranting loon and his annoying girlfriend? The first half of the film is passable, but the steep decline after makes you wonder just where all the energy of the pitch-perfect opening sequence went.

Alastair