Can a post apocalyptic movie be uplifting? Can Denzel Washington play any other character besides an angry police officer/bodyguard? Does Gary Oldman remind you of the homeless man on the corner you pass every day who is cross examining a dead pigeon? In a world that is a blasted wasteland dotted with pockets of huddled, bedraggled humanity – or maybe they just shot it in Detroit – you will find your answers. Read on…
The Book of Eli stars Denzel Washington as Eli and Gary Oldman as Carnegie, characters in a story as old as the pickle-age of Oldman’s liver (114). Eli walks west, trying to mind his own business while carrying a book that Gary Oldman wants more than a shower.
In a world that has moved on after a cataclysm, basic necessities are worth gold. Shampoo and lighters are currency for water, food and lodging. Scavenging corpses for any sort of valuables is the only way to survive. If you don’t have any shampoo or fire you can try and make useful items from found detritus. Eli saunters into town looking to barter some forehead gloves for pepperoni Hot Pockets and ends up square in the sights of Carnegie, the local mayor. When the two cross paths bullets and body parts fly.
Directed by the Hughes brothers, the landscape traveled by Eli is a thoroughly convincing, bleak ‘scape, populated with disturbing characters befitting a world gone to hell. Watching Eli move through these situations, always calculating his exit strategy, is a treat to watch. Eli is nothing but precise in his movements and watching him negotiate his way out of trouble is quite disturbing but in an oddly satisfying way. Seeing justice dealt in such a gruesome fashion just feels right.
The story is solid and don’t let it enter your mind that a simple locked room at a Motel 6 could have solved everything. The journey is a fun one and I have saved something for the fellas I have not mentioned about the film hidden in this sentence, Mila Kunis.
The movie is not only about Eli smashing his way through the west. There is a deeper message in the film that is right up my alley: faith. Faith is something that cannot be proven nor disproved – it just is. Eli is doing what he does based on faith and faith alone. The film deals with these themes in a very broad way but I still thoroughly enjoyed it. George Michael had it right: You gotta have faith, faith, faith. 3 stars.
