The Book of Eli (****)
Directed by: The Hughes Brothers (Albert and Allen)Starring: Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis
Seen: February 26th 2010
**** Out of ****
The Book of Eli starts with sparse information, as we only see a man (later introduced as Eli (Washington) first through a quick observation of a name-tag, and then only right near the end of the movie) travelling across a desolate and forgotten landscape. We hear about an apocalyptic event that occurred thirty winters ago, when the sky opened up and death came down, blinding a significant number of civilians, and leaving the rest of humanity either dead or scrounging for an existence. When one character asks another what it was like before the change, she is told that back then people had more than they needed, and that absolute luxuries now where taken for granted back then.
Eli is shown as a solitary warrior, willing to protect the book he is carrying at all costs, and he is very effective at it, as we are shown in the four major confrontational scenes in the movie. These scenes also follow an interesting and brilliant progression, going from only a silhouetted Eli dispatching five or six opponents under a bridge to a bar-fight with many more casualties, to a destructive shoot-out to a bit of pretty cool pyrotechnics. Carnegie (Oldman) is an altogether different prospect, as in a fashion similar to the middle ages, the ones with the knowledge (i.e. those who can read) wields the power. Carnegie wants one thing and one thing only, a specific book that he will be able to use as a weapon to rule his own barren corner of the world. The book in question just so happens to be the one Eli carries, and it is also an exceedingly rare thing in this world, since it is believed they were all destroyed after the apocalyptic event for either causing it or for fear of them causing a repeat of it. Eli violently guards and faithfully reads his bible, and anyone who comes near it will pay. As the movie’s tagline professes: “Some will kill to have it. He will kill to protect it.”
I was staring at the screen in awe during The Book of Eli, as the Hughes Brothers have created a world so sumptuous in its detail and barrenness that you can’t help but feel its authenticity pouring into you. At every turn I felt that this was the reward movie-goers get for persisting to go to the movies, I go to see movies in the hope that it will be something like The Book of Eli. Washington is in fine form as the professionally violent Eli, just as he was in Man on Fire and to an extent in Training Day (although his character then was far from what it is now). Oldman is one of the classic villains and here he gets another chance to channel some of his famous previous villains. In The Book of Eli I was reminded in particular of two of his roles at two different times during the movie. Firstly, Agent Stansfield from The Professional, and later Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg from The Fifth Element – two of my all-time favourite movies. Mila Kunis adds her own bit of flair in Solara, a daughter of sorts to the evil Carnegie, who eventually teams up with Eli on his travels to the West.
To discuss Eli any further would require the reader to also actually have seen it, so I won’t go into more detail, apart from saying that there are a few noteworthy discussion points from the movie’s last few minutes that carry deep significance linking back to the movie’s title and also something that is even bigger than just the movie.
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