The Book of Eli (2010)

It’s about time Denzel Washington took his turn as the leading man in a post-apocalyptic dystopia. Most of the better (and better-looking) actors of his age have already left their marks on the role. Mel Gibson started his career with one (Mad Max). Kevin Costner nearly ended his career with two (Waterworld and The Postman). And Viggo Mortensen is in one right now (The Road). In the sepia-toned futuristic Wild West world of The Book of Eli, Denzel finally has his chance to walk the scorched Earth.

In fact, his character has been walking–dressed in sunglasses, a kaffiyeh, and backpack–for quite a while. The year is unspecified. What we do know is that it’s been so long since the heyday of mankind that there are very few alive who remember the way it was. One of those few is Eli (Denzel Washington).

Eli has been on his walkabout for 30 years, ever since the war and ensuing cataclysm that folks describe as “the hole in the sky.” While the film never explains what happened (one if its major flaws, but I’ll get to that in a moment), the consequences are clear: the sun is the enemy. Water is a scarce commodity, literacy an even scarcer one, and basic human decency is the rarest of all.

That makes Eli’s reading material–the last surviving King James Bible–all the more precious. So when he’s “asked” to empty his backpack by a group of marauding, cannibalistic heavies with very bad teeth, Eli has no choice but to eviscerate them with expediency. He’s on a mission, you see, to deliver the book somewhere in the West.

On his journey there, he ends up in a makeshift town run by a would-be Machiavelli named Carnegie (Gary Oldman) and his goons. Carnegie is another of the few who remembers the old world, and he uses that knowledge (in particular of a nearby underground spring) to lord over the ragged townspeople. This also extends to his against-her-will girlfriend, Claudia (Jennifer Beals), and her daughter, Solara (Mila Kunis, miscast and anachronistically costumed out of a Delia’s catalog). Carnegie has been on a search for the Bible himself, certain that having access to those sacred words will give him power beyond his wildest dreams.

This is where the real action of the film (what little there is) gets going. Solara lets slip to Carnegie that Eli might have what he’s looking for. As Eli tries to walk on into the westward setting sun, Carnegie’s pistol-packing cronies attempt to lighten his load. It’s a scene that looks like something out of Gunfight at the OK Corral. Bullets fly from at least a half-dozen guns but Eli is untouchable, as if protected from on high.

If the rest of the film were as smart, beautifully shot, and intense as this scene, The Book of Eli would have been a great success. Instead, it degenerates into a run-of-the-mill chase across the barren landscape that has become cliché enough for rap music videos. To be fair, there is one scene involving a couple of tea-serving cannibals with a Victrola that plays “Ring my Bell” that’s pretty terrific.

That’s the trouble with this movie: the Hughes Brothers’ directorial choices are either very good (see the scenes mentioned above) or incredibly bad (the final scene of the movie induced a hearty laugh, although I’m sure not intentionally). Likewise, first-time scribe Gary Whitta’s screenplay is riddled with inexplicable plot conceits. What exactly was this big badda-boom that happened 30 years ago? It matters, because a sizable number of people seem to be able to survive without fresh water and non-human food sources.

Even the actors seem plagued by this curse of patchiness. Oldman, the go-to guy for directors in search of brilliant, deranged bad guys (The Professional, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, The Fifth Element), is mostly wasted here. Carnegie starts out with great promise: we first see him reading a biography of Mussolini, and an early scene where he washes Claudia’s hair with some ill-gotten shampoo is simultaneously tender, sexy, and terrifying. But, as the chase gets going, these nuances are abandoned in favor of screaming insanity.

As for Washington, his ability as an actor has always come from his charming delivery of lines and the irresistible curl of his lip when he smiles. Although Eli capitalizes on another of Washington’s strong suits–his haughty, almost holy gait–he has too few lines or smiles to get his full, heady effect here.

The Book of Eli endeavors to be an original take on the familiar tale of the lone hero in Earth’s bleak future and, in some ways, succeeds. Eli borrows less from Gibson, Costner, or Mortensen’s mold than he does from Stephen King’s Walking Dude in The Dark Tower series. Except this mysterious outsider plays for the side of good, rather than evil. The film also offers up some unexpected twists that the other movies don’t. Still, there isn’t enough in the way of story, action, or Denzel’s winning ways to get it just right.