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What it's about:
In the not-too-distant future, some 30 years after the final war, a solitary man walks across the wasteland that was once America. Empty cities, broken highways, seared earth - all around him, the marks of catastrophic destruction. There is no civilisation here, no law. A warrior not by choice but necessity, Eli (Denzel Washington) seeks only peace but, if challenged, will cut his attackers down before they realise their fatal mistake. It's not his life he guards so fiercely but his hope for the future; a hope he has carried and protected for 30 years and is determined to realise. Only one other man in this ruined world understands the power Eli holds, and is determined to make it his own: Carnegie (Gary Oldman), the self-appointed despot of a makeshift town of thieves and gunmen.
What we thought:
Shot in stylishly tanned sepias and washed out aquamarines, The Book of Eli looks beautiful. The cast is enticing too: Denzel as the warrior prophet; Gary Oldman a bookish villain; Jennifer "Flashdance" Beals his blind, abused wife; Mila "That 70’s Show" Kunis her sexy prostitute daughter. British vet, Michael Gambon even has a cameo as an eccentric cannibal farmer. Pretty colourful characters, but there’s a bigger problem than their clichés.
Denzel’s deftly Zen performance as the ninja-crusader-courier aside, the genre mash-up all but crucifies character and plot at the altar of action movie mania. From the first scene it’s a recycled movie motif shambles. When Eli skewers a cat for dinner employing a hunter’s technique used by John Rambo in First Blood you just know it’s going to one of those movies. You know those annoying post-Tarantino flicks that think recycling entire scenes from their source material is paying homage to their influences? Then again, Rambo was made almost 30 years ago so maybe directors, the Hughes Brothers expect no one to remember?
After watching Eli trekking west through the wasteland for 30 ponderous minutes spent slicing and dicing up scavenging gangs while searching for water and taking shelter, it's almost impossible not to feel like you're watching an MTV mash-up of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Kill Bill and Kevin Costner’s The Postman.
Boring? Not totally. But we’ve seen so many honey-trap ambush scenes before. We know the hero’s going to give those three villain stooges what they deserve. Why? Because the villains are bald, bearded and beastly bloody cartoons. The thrill of Eli’s kill isn’t especially riveting either. Not if you’ve seen any Extreme Asian action film, anyway.
And from the moment Eli arrives at the small frontier town controlled by crime boss Carnegie (Oldman) the movie melts down into one of those one-dimensional spaghetti western duels between good and evil. One of the baddies actually whistles Ennio Morricone’s theme to Once Upon A Time In America!
From here on out the film is populated with 'makeovers' of a slew of 'magic' western and martial arts movie moments culled from Walter Hill's Last Man Standing, Tarantino’s Kill Bill and Clint Eastwood’s entire oeuvre. There's the saloon shoot ‘em up sequence. There’s the hero and heroine’s hideout being blasted to bits (The Gauntlet, anyone?). There's even the "Satan sends a sexy young whore to seduce Jesus" scene.
Wait up, Christ being tempted by the devil while wandering in the desert for 40 days and nights is one thing. But comparisons to Eli fending off a young Jezebel’s advances by reading her a passage from the Bible is surely a blasphemously aberrant reading? Maybe. But, by now the action has become so telegraphed you’re happy to make your own action movie up in your head to escape the mundanity.
Hell, this is precisely what Eli does. Refusing to sell his soul – or his book - to the nefarious Carnegie, he heads off into the sunset with sexy young sidekick Solara in tow and Carnegie’s gang hot on their heels. So, do Bonnie & Clyde reach the Promised Land to deliver the good news? Well, let’s just say the final philosophical punch line does its best to throw a few creative coins into the film’s formulaic fountain.
