Just a second, here... if we're really roaming around the wasteland of a post-nuclear world, a world utterly devastated and left barren more than thirty years ago, a world so brutalized that a man will happily kill another man for a sip of water or travel size bottle of shampoo, then how is it that our central character -- a man we first meet while hunting feral cat in an ash-strewn former forest -- looks as though he hasn't skipped a single meal in years? And what's with the fat guys? Hell, there's not a single damn person in all of The Book of Eli who strikes me as even the least little bit peckish. Unkempt? Yes. Disheveled? Most definitely. In need of a dentist? Come one and all! But malnourished? Nope. Not a single one.
It may seem an odd point to fixate on but it's a symptom of a greater issue in the latest effort from The Hughes Brothers. For all the gorgeous art direction, for all the slick set pieces, for all the bits and pieces that really do click and impress, there's just never any real sense of dedication to the thing, no sense that they're at all interested in going more than skin deep. It's a problem that goes well beyond the look of the film and into the underlying themes and philosophies and -- for a film that wants to touch on as many Big Issues as this one does -- that surface treatment is even more fatal than Denzel Washington's flickering blade...
Washington is the titular Eli, a lone wanderer through a desolate wasteland. The titular book kept hidden in his backpack, Eli's sole goal to protect it and take it west to points unknown but promised -- apparently -- by a mysterious voice that spoke in Eli's mind, leading him to the book, promising protection, and telling him what to do with it. On the protection front, ol' voicey seems to have made good because Eli is freakishly gifted in the arts of combat whether with blade or bow or gun. Ain't nobody taking this guy down. Not that that'll stop petty territorial dictator Carnegie (Gary Oldman) from trying because he's got a hankering for exactly the sort of book that Eli carries, believing it is the key to building his own power and expanding his empire.
Right up front, yes: The book is a Bible. And groan if you must because an awful lot of what you're afraid is going to happen does -- though it also goes some surprising directions -- and an awful lot of it is every bit as clumsy and ham-fisted as you're afraid it may be. What we've got here is the world in the aftermath of a religious war with Eli as the wandering true prophet -- equal and explicit parts Abraham and Moses with some Greek archetypes and a certain Japanese samurai hero who shall remain nameless for spoiler reasons thrown into the mix -- trying to protect faith and truth for its own sake doing battle with Carnegie, the foul manipulator who just wants to twist things to his own advantage. Before the film is done it also throws in a specific reference to the monastic traditions -- both Muslim and Christian -- and their repositories of knowledge being the catalyst for the end of the Dark Ages and, I think, tries to argue that storing and respecting knowledge regardless of specific creed is the path to hope but before getting there it's simply faithful prophet good, manipulative politician bad with a complete disregard for any moral quandry that may arise from the fact that good prophet man is also horrifically violent and willing to simply stand aside and let a young woman be raped early in the film because intervening might compromise his incredibly vague mission.
To be clear: addressing issues of religion in culture right now is a good thing. I would even say it's a vital thing. And I'm all for drawing lines between truly faithful people and those who manipulate for personal profit, not to mention balancing the evils that arise out of misused faith against the good that that same faith properly applied has done. These are good things to do and I'm not at all critical of The Book Of Eli and The Hughes Brothers for trying to go there. But if you're gonna go there then you really, really need to have something more substantial to say on the matter than this film does. More substantial by several orders of magnitude.
So... as a film with something to say, not so impressed. How does it fare as a piece of entertainment?
Art direction is cinematography is absolutely stunning as is the Hughes' handling of the blistering -- though much less frequent than the trailers would lead you to believe -- action sequences. They actually made me believe that Denzel was one bad mother with that blade in his hand and given my general feelings towards Denzel these days, that's no mean feat. The fight sequences are kinetic, stylish, thud with impact and are enormously bloody. As for the other actors, with the exception of the competent but badly out-of-place Mila Kunis -- who is just not believable in this setting -- the support cast is strong across the board. Oldman is fabulously watchable, as always, Tom Waits -- a perfect piece of casting -- scores himself a nice little part, Rome's Ray Stevenson brings a nice touch of humanity to a character that could easily have been a shallow cliche, and Jennifer Beals steals every one of her few scenes as a tormented blind woman trying to navigate her way through this dangerous world.
Really, this is part of what makes The Book Of Eli a rather frustrating experience ... in terms of technical film making and performances it is pretty much bang on. It looks great, is laced with a fistful of really engaging performances and has plenty of whiz-bang to keep the adrenaline flowing. It's just that it's such an overbearing message movie and the message itself clumsily handled and that disconnect between package and contents just deflates the whole experience.