If life were to imitate art any time soon I would say we are in for a bit of a grey season. It appears Terminator Salvation and The Road didn’t offer enough ashy post-apocalyptic decay in 2009 so the Hughes brothers (Menace II Society) banded together with Denzel Washington to deliver the spiritually driven actioner The Book of Eli, a film that never renders much of a heartbeat as much as it just predictably hums along for 118 minutes. I’m not necessarily complaining mind you — this film isn’t half-bad — just don’t go in expecting your world to be turned upside down.
Denzel stars as the title character Eli whom we first meet walking alone in the grey and desolate world left after nuclear war tore a hole in the sky causing the sun to scorch the Earth. Eli walks this wasteland with a purpose only he knows and in his possession is a book, of which the importance is quite clear once we meet Gary Oldman.
Oldman plays the evil Carnegie, a man lording over a small town in the middle of nowhere in search of said book with the intent of using it to control the unfortunate souls around him who are unable to read or write and would be susceptible to coercion. Control is his angle and he knows how to gain it.
The Book of Eli is a highly spiritual film, but it never takes things too far one way or the other even though it has its opportunities. The moment Carnegie spells out his plans, in which his intentions are obvious, his description could have upset some had it been explored further. It’s quite clear, though, the Hughes brothers, working with a script written by Gary Whitta, were more interested in telling a story than making any kind of grand statements.
As such, the story has a few ups, such as the injection of humor offered by Michael Gambon late in the film and Eli’s playful exchange with Tom Waits a bit earlier. The action scenes work well and the mood is set nicely using the stark landscapes of New Mexico to represent America and a scratchy techno-rock infused score from Atticus Ross. You can call upon many post-apocalyptic films for reference as cars litter the street shoulders and craters can be seen off to the side of the road. Echoes of Mad Max are obvious, but it never gets to the point it feels thin. There’s nothing to complain about just as much as there is nothing really to champion.
Denzel is solid as Eli, and like I’m sure many of you out there also wondered, I was curious how Washington — in his mid-fifties — would do in a role that required plenty of hand-to-hand combat. I wondered if it would look slow or if flash editing would be necessary to hide his age, but in fact things looked quite intact and the action isn’t overly used by any means. Stylized and visually comparable to a comic book it may be, but for an R-rated movie this isn’t a gore-soaked extravaganza. In fact the Hughes brothers did a very good job never overselling any one portion of the film and managed to tell a very balanced story that revealed just enough information when necessary and knew just when to throw in some action to keep things moving along.
For what it’s worth I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend The Book of Eli to anyone looking for something to watch in theaters. As a beginning of the year entry, this film tries much harder to tell a story than most and actually comes out doing so with a good bit of action tossed into the mix. After all, as I was discussing with some fellow critics before the film began, it’s hard to think of many Denzel Washington films that aren’t easy to watch and even those that fall lower on the scale are better than 90% of the dreck that’s out there.
