Movie Review: The Book of Eli
Stacy Normand
Issue date: 2/1/10 Section: Arts and Entertainment
Have you ever gotten deja vu while sitting in a movie theater? If you haven't, go see "The Book of Eli," and you may find yourself wondering why this particular film makes you feel like you've seen it before. Then it will come to you: it's "Mad Max" with religious overtones.
The film follows a man named Eli (Denzel Washington of "Training Day") as he travels across a post-apocalyptic America on his way to deliver a "special book" to an unknown settlement in the West. Along the way, he meets a power-hungry maniac named Carnegie (Gary Oldman of "Dracula" and "Sid and Nancy"), who will stop at nothing to possess the sacred and powerful tome.
While the film isn't going to change your life, make you cry or even make you think all that much, it is an undeniably fun way to waste two hours. The plot may not be that original and its twists may be totally predictable, but a good futuristic action movie never gets old.
The movie actually takes a fairly original approach to this genre. Unlike typical sci-fi fantasy, the world that the film depicts resembles more of a cowboy landscape of small, desert towns, with saloons included, than a space age metropolis. The colors, which are toned down to dull grays and browns for most of the film, eloquently evoke this dead, deserted feeling. As mentioned before, the movie really feels like a slightly creepier, more religious "Road Warrior."
Unfortunately, the film's heavy-handed repetitiveness buries much of this appeal. After they've called the book "sacred" for the millionth time in the first half hour, most of the audience gets it. As such, it's a little hard to get invested in the story.
Like most action movies, "The Book of Eli" does not have much of a background story, and its characters, including the lead, are more like cardboard cut outs than real people. In fact, we don't learn almost anything about Eli other than that he's a guy carrying a book who knows how to fight. Given that Denzel Washington is one of today's most capable actors, it's hard to see this lack of character development as anything but a severe under-utilization of his skills.
The film follows a man named Eli (Denzel Washington of "Training Day") as he travels across a post-apocalyptic America on his way to deliver a "special book" to an unknown settlement in the West. Along the way, he meets a power-hungry maniac named Carnegie (Gary Oldman of "Dracula" and "Sid and Nancy"), who will stop at nothing to possess the sacred and powerful tome.
While the film isn't going to change your life, make you cry or even make you think all that much, it is an undeniably fun way to waste two hours. The plot may not be that original and its twists may be totally predictable, but a good futuristic action movie never gets old.
The movie actually takes a fairly original approach to this genre. Unlike typical sci-fi fantasy, the world that the film depicts resembles more of a cowboy landscape of small, desert towns, with saloons included, than a space age metropolis. The colors, which are toned down to dull grays and browns for most of the film, eloquently evoke this dead, deserted feeling. As mentioned before, the movie really feels like a slightly creepier, more religious "Road Warrior."
Unfortunately, the film's heavy-handed repetitiveness buries much of this appeal. After they've called the book "sacred" for the millionth time in the first half hour, most of the audience gets it. As such, it's a little hard to get invested in the story.
Like most action movies, "The Book of Eli" does not have much of a background story, and its characters, including the lead, are more like cardboard cut outs than real people. In fact, we don't learn almost anything about Eli other than that he's a guy carrying a book who knows how to fight. Given that Denzel Washington is one of today's most capable actors, it's hard to see this lack of character development as anything but a severe under-utilization of his skills.
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