Starring: Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis
Directed by: Albert and Allen Hughes
14A: violence, mature themes
Running time: 118 minutes
Two and a half stars out of five
You can deflate the pretensions (warranted or not) of any movie with “of” in its title through a simple grammatical flip. Would The Lambs’ Silence, Music’s Sound or Fools’ Ship have won Oscars? Would April’s Pieces or The American Empire’s Decline have been nominated? Would anyone have seen Bagger Vance’s Legend? (Not fair, I know: No one saw The Legend of Bagger Vance.)
It’s a point worth making because The Book of Eli, for all its Biblical connotations, is really just about Eli’s book. Granted, the book happens to be the Bible, a point not made explicit until midway through the film, although anyone who hasn’t figured it out in the first 10 minutes has clearly been napping.
The film stars Denzel Washington as a close cousin of Viggo Mortensen’s character from The Road. Both are wandering through a bleak, blasted post-apocalyptic American wasteland (no, not Vegas). Eli has been at it a little longer — he’s been heading westward for 30 years, ever since a vague cataclysm all but wiped out humanity. The fact that every second shot shows him striding in slow motion explains why it’s taking him so long to get anywhere.
In the opening scenes, it seems as though the population has been reduced, as in The Road, to nothing but lone nomads and the occasional small band of brigands. (Also, for some reason, an alarming number of feral cats.) Soon, however, Eli arrives in a dusty township ruled by a grizzled warlord played by Gary Oldman.
Oldman’s character is named Carnegie and, coincidentally, he’s interested in building a small library. A very small library, in fact; the one book he wants is the Bible. His hit-and-miss search involves sending illiterate thieves to scour the countryside in search of printed matter. One party returns with an old copy of Oprah’s magazine and The Diary of Anne Frank. Carnegie puts down his biography of Mussolini and orders them burned —in case you weren’t already certain of his wickedness.
So what does an evil strongman want with the Good Book? He’s certain its stirring text will allow him to buttress his power over the townies and expand his (by post-apocalyptic standards) sizable empire. Unfortunately, Bibles are hard to come by — those not immolated in the long-ago catastrophe have since been rounded up and destroyed — though copies of The Da Vinci Code still surface from time to time, which must rankle the church.
Eli has come to town to get a charge for his digital music player. (Ironically, the film is both anti-Kindle and pro-iPod.)
This leads to some amusing scenes of him bartering with the local shopkeeper (Tom Waits), offering the usual textiles, but also rare, prewar KFC moist towelettes and cat-oil lip balm. A trip to the local watering hole then lands him in a fight over a cat — again with the cats! — which is how Carnegie becomes aware of him.
Carnegie tries to wheedle and cajole Eli out of his book, but the man won’t budge.
Violence doesn’t work, either — Eli has fighting reflexes that would shame a Jedi. Neither do the charms of Carnegie’s servant Solara (Mila Kunis); in true action-movie form, the comely lure decides to switch sides and join Eli on his quest west. (It has to be said that Kunis’s character looks mighty fetching for a girl who grew up without access to shampoo or a mall.)
The Book of Eli was written by graphic novelist Gary Whitta and directed by twin brothers Allen and Albert Hughes (Menace II Society, From hell). Though beautifully shot in a palette that stretches all the way from grey to brown and back again, the story never seems to get its philosophical bearings.
Sometimes it seems to be trying for a thoughtful contemplation of faith. Occasionally, it plays like an advertisement for the Gideons. And every time someone looks at Eli the wrong way, it becomes a bloodbath.
No comments:
Post a Comment