Film Review: The Book of Eli
The Book of Eli
Directors: the Hughes Brothers
Writer: Gary Whitta
Rated R, 118 minutes
Reviewed by Martha K. Baker
It’s High Noon all day long in “The Book of Eli.” This wasted Western, like its landscape, is tense and dark -- and utterly reprehensible.
The film is set after an apocalyptic flash that blinded most everyone as punishment for their sins. This land and its people suffer a permanent brown-out. This world is not without hope, however: Carnegie, the leader of a small-town gang, hopes to find the last remaining copy of The Book. Our hero, Eli, has a copy among the goods he keeps in his backpack for barter because, now, people kill for things they used to throw away, so currency comes in gloves and water.
Eli is on his way West, following voices that told him, there, he would find his reward. Nothing -- not the flies or the lords of same -- stops him. Eli claims to be a man of peace, has been for the 30 years (number rings a bell, hmmm) since the apocalypse. But he deflects bullets like a comic book hero in Teflon Town and wields weapons with watery ease, his mighty sword but one s-curve away from the Word. En route, after miles of flat land, he comes to the town lorded over by Carnegie. He meets Carnegie’s blind mistress and her unblind, illiterate daughter, named Solara (“sun”).
Solara has heard of this precious book, too, and when Carnegie sends her to seduce Eli into admitting he has a copy (Eli remains chaste), she asks him to read to her. Instead, he quotes the 23rd Psalm. Her response to his recitation: “That’s beautiful. Did you write that?” Little humor here, folks. Yes, he says, then corrects himself quickly lest the frowny clouds open up and he is smote -- like that wouldn’t be redundant after the apocalypse.
It’s hard to rant about, err, review this bloody film without the revelation that the book is, indeed, the Bible -- the King James Version at that. Carnegie hinted at that back when he put down his biography of Mussolini to look over the books, including a copy of (tee-hee)The DaVinci Code, which gleaners offered him. Carnegie wanted none of their booty. He wants The Book. Not that he read it before the Big Boom, but he’s heard it’s a dangerous weapon, and he thinks he needs it to grow as a dictator.
Eli and Solara get out of town, barely ahead of Carnegie, and Eli continues his march to the sea until the end (the earth’s, his, the movie’s, your patience). Along the way, they encounter marauders, hoards and two lovely (yeah, right) old people in a farm house.
The marvelous English actors Michael Gambon and Frances de La Tour play the farmhands, and for their 10 minutes on screen, life returns to the scorched earth and this moribund film. Whereas they managed to lose their British accents for something twangy, Malcolm MacDowall, as a printer, couldn’t be bothered. Gary Oldman, good as always but not new here, plays Carnegie as a crafty coward, Ray Stevenson plays the bald head henchman, and Jennifer Beals plays Carnegie’s mistress as a wise woman. Mila Kunis plays Solara as someone who wandered off the set of a sunnier movie. Denzel Washington plays Eli as a righteous, Stoic survivalist with no wriggle room for invention or acting.
“The Book of Eli” is more about revealing than writing, and Eli has one more secret to reveal in the last moments of the film, which proves yet again that screenwriter, Gary Whitta, had not one whit or tittle of original thought, only a cornucopia of cliches. “The Book of Eli” was directed by Allen and Albert Hughes, best known for “Menace II Society” (1993). This is their first film since “From Hell” in 2001. The twins play with silhouettes, thus reducing some bloodshed to shadows, and offer awesome overhead shots of the zitty and cratered earth.
Otherwise, Whitta and the Hugheses do their business in counterfeit merchandise. The sword Eli whips out is not a weapon, for example, but a symbol of sovereignty for the Yoruba tribe. But the main reason the film is so reprehensible is that the filmmakers traffic in the Bible. They pimp it as an excuse for a bloodfest. They slip in references to the New Testament as a source of salvation, but they don’t believe it. They pander to Bibleists, who might think the romantic end merits two hours of stunning violence to get there. In “The Book of Eli,” the Book has been ill-served because the hook is superficial, immoral and insincere.
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