The Book of Eli

The last time filmmakers Albert and Allen Hughes stepped behind the camera, it was to make 2001's From Hell. I don't know what they saw in The Book of Eli that made them want to make this their first film in nearly 10 years, but whatever it was, it's not up on the screen. This is a lethargic and frequently dull post-apocalyptic journey that we've seen one too many times up on the screen, and Eli gives us very little reason to care to see it again. Yeah, there are some good visuals on display, and the strong cast is game, but there's not much here to get excited about.

First off, let's talk about the look of the film. It's another one of those doomed depictions of a ruined Earth that's struggling to survive after a war wiped out most of humanity. The scattered remains of society seem to have built their lives around the styles and teachings of old Westerns, and every other post-apocalyptic movie ever made, but mainly the Mad Max films. The Hughes Brothers try to add some visual flair (slow-mo, roaming and tracking camera with Matrix-style effects), but that's all it is. It doesn't serve the story necessarily, it's just there for stylistic purposes only. The plot itself is a rather bloated one about a "Walker" who roams the land. His name is Eli, and he's played by Denzel Washington. Eli comes across as a blank slate for most of the movie, and intentionally so. He's one of the few who remembers what the world was like before the war, and wanders the land, searching for a destination that even he is not sure of. All he knows is that he has to head West, and that he must protect a book that he carries at all times.

How does Eli know which way he's going, and what's waiting for him? "Faith", he replies simply. He says a voice within him guided him to the book, and now he must deliver it. It's a dangerous world, full of thieves and motorcycle biker gang rejects. Fortunately, Eli is pretty handy with a gun, blade, spear, arrow, or just about anything sharp and pointy he can get his hands on. These skills come in handy when he wanders into a town run by the evil Carnegie (Gary Oldman, who seems to have been paid by the amount of scenery he chews). Carnegie has been having his henchmen search the land for a book that could help him rule not just his current town, but many others. It just so happens to be the one that Eli carries. I'm being intentionally vague as to what the book is, but it's not hard to figure out while you're watching the film itself. Eli is joined by a young woman named Solara (Mila Kunis), who used to work for Carnegie along with her blind mother (Jennifer Beals), but teams up with Eli when she realizes the power the book he carries holds.

The Book of Eli was obviously made by talented people. It just fails to grab our attention. The pace is nearly glacial. I think the Hughes Brothers were trying for an atmospheric approach, but the problem with this is that the world the movie is set in looks exactly like stuff we've seen too many times before, so it's not strong enough to carry the movie just on visuals alone. That leaves us with the plot and characters, both of which are severely undernourished. The characters are thinly written, and never come across as people we can become emotionally attached to. This is intentional for Eli, who is supposed to be a mysterious loner, but I was distressed to learn that everyone else has the same amount of personality. Despite the presence of some strong actors like Washington and Oldman, and even cameos by Michael Gambon and Malcolm McDowell, they're not given interesting characters to play, or they're not developed enough.

Because nothing grabs our attention, we're left to concentrate on some of the many lapses of logic the film expects us to believe. I especially love the fact that Eli's female companion, Solara, constantly has perfect hair and make up. This cannot be easy, given she lives in a world where water is scarce, everyone else is forced to wear rags, and generally look like they have sand and dust coming out of their pores. Even escaping from an armored vehicle that's flipped over leaves little more than a scar, and maybe slightly messed up hair. (The captors within the vehicle that she escapes from aren't so lucky to get off so easily.) As an actress, I've always found Kunis more comfortable in comic roles. She's not as out of place here as she was in Max Payne (where she played the least-convincing femme fatale in recent memory), but she still frequently seems lost, and sometimes seems to be reading off of cue cards just out of the camera's frame.

This is a movie that obviously had grand ambitions, but got lost somewhere during the trip to the screen. The Book of Eli is bloated and dull, when it wants to be big and exciting. It also has one of those endings that makes you rethink everything that came before it, and not in a good way. I admire what the film tried to do, but I think it needed a big shot of humanity in order to work.

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