Movie Review: "The Book of Eli"

Overall rating: 9.0 out of 10; Highly recommended

Very few action films will encourage you to think in any deep fashion. Most of them only have the naked bones of a story and uninspiring characters, making their way through a checklist of the tropes common to this genre: fiery explosions, a high body count, a hot and sultry leading lady, and enough guns to make a Texan hunter say, "Aren't you being a little excessive?"

But, as a delightful treat for the dismal (in terms of movies) month of January, The Book of Eli refuses to be counted among the masses of mediocrity. In what looks at first glance like yet another post-apocalyptic thriller, a la The Road, Eli shows a great deal of quality and originality not in avoiding cliches, but in using and altering them to create a film not quite like any that have come before it. The story may be simple, but it is much more deep than broad, providing the viewer an astonishing level of meaning, insights and questions with its meager helpings of characters, setting and story arc.

Denzel Washington gives one of his best performances (quite an accomplishment in itself) as Eli, a man roaming what is left of western American three decades after a nuclear war has wiped out most of humanity. Having to fend off dehydration and the occasional gang of diseased rapists and cannibals, Eli carries - and reads on a daily basis - what may be the last remaining copy of the Bible. There are some references made to the book inspiring religious fanaticism and causing the aforementioned war, and to the survivors' subsequent efforts to destroy any copies of the Scriptures they could get their hands on. But Eli has discovered this one, and claims to hear the voice of God, telling him to go west to take the book to a place of safety, and whispering promises to Eli of divine protection during his journey.

Of course, no hero would be complete without a villain to match him, and Gary Oldman proves more than able to step up to the task. Oldman plays Carnegie, the mayor/dictator of a little town somewhere in the desert, surrounded by gun-toting henchmen and twisting everyone around his finger. Also, he seems to be the only literate man in a community mostly made of people born after the nuclear war. Though he makes reading a habit, he seeks a Bible in particular, especially for the extra power and manipulation it would grant him as a leader. He himself speaks of how the Bible, due to its history and effect on people's minds and hearts, could give him control over the weak, desperate souls lingering on a dying planet. He's rather like a Mad Max version of a televangelist. And when Eli steps into town for water and to recharge a portable battery, Carnegie comes to learn of the book he guards (and his considerable fighting skills). Sparks fly and blood spills when Eli becomes the one man Carnegie cannot bargain with, manipulate, or sidetrack from a God-given mission out west. The two men are then locked into a lethal tug-of-war over this one very important book.

The Book of Eli joins The Passion of the Christ and Signs as one of the greatest "secular Christian" films Hollywood has produced in a very long time. The pacing can be a little slow at times, but I felt like this was done on purpose, to give the audience a chance to think about the topics this movie deals with while simultaneously watching its story unfold. And even if these points in the film are too slow for you, the spectacular action scenes more than make up for it. And though I would have liked to have seen the characters developed just a little more, I found them amazing all the same. The way this movie is set up, I really could buy that we were just now finding the characters in this particular moment in their lives, that they had a past and lives before the opening credits.

Denzel's Eli is the perfect example of the kind of hero I want to see in more movies: imperfect and questioning of the violence he inflicts on others (even when it is only to protect himself or the Bible he carries), but resolute in his convictions and unfailingly polite to the people who aren't trying to kill him or relieve him of his few possessions. Oldman steals every scene he is in. Carnegie drips with quiet menace every moment he is on screen, even when things are going his way, and his villain is an ingenious creation, his personality the abuse and cruelty of a warlord combined with the etiquette and mannerisms of a Southern Gentleman.

Pay no heed to the mixed or hostile reactions most critics are aiming at this movie. Take, for instance, the supposedly "clumsy" or "ill-placed" themes of religion and its abuse in The Book of Eli. When a critic says a movie's reach exceeds its grasp (in terms of the issues a movie tries to deal with), they usually mean that they went into the theater expecting a mindless action flick, and if the film manages to be a little smarter and more high-concept than they assumed, the critic's brain short circuits and they attribute this to a lack of quality in the movie they are evaluating. Far from handling the religious subtexts with butterfingers, Eli makes them vital to the climax and the overall story.

One of the film's greatest surprises is Mila Kunis. Best known for her work as Jackie from That 70s Show and the voice of Meg from Family Guy, Kunis stars as Carnegie's stepdaughter who becomes fast friends with Eli, and strikes the right balance between "feisty" and "restrained." Her turn from playing teen girls with low self-esteem has been criminally undersold by most of the critics, and even if her performance isn't Oscar caliber, her acting never once distracted me from the story.

Of course, some have decried a major plot twist at the end, a sudden insight which has even led Roger Ebert, in a rare but ludicrous misstep, to write off the film's third act as "goofy." While it may not be the kind of twist most trained film commentators will enjoy, I will say this about the huge turn in the story: It makes perfect sense, if one accepts that Eli truly is hearing the voice of God and accepting His instruction. The movie, in other ways, has already made it quite clear that Eli is not insane, acting on a hunch, or just making things up. Something or Someone is guiding his path. The majority of critics are used to assuming (and a movie's climax confirming their assumption) that a character who claims to talk to God is either schizophrenic, or is having a vaguely-defined "religious experience" that may or may not be a character's meeting with the Almighty. And often (though not always, of course), they will throw scorn upon a film if it dares to assume that the religious kook was right all along. All I will say is that, if someone can accept divine intervention in a story when the Nazis' faces melt off in Raiders of the Lost Ark, it should be even more acceptable if a story allows God to talk to someone, even if it's only in a "still, small voice."

I give this film my highest recommendation. If you can get past the R rating, and the rolling heads, language and a scene of attempted rape which earn it, this is one of the most thoughtful and awesome action films to come out of Hollywood in ages.