film reviews

It seems Hollywood would like us to think the end of the world is upon us. In the last few months we have been treated to 2012 and The Road, and now we have our latest offering in the form of The Book of Eli. Written by first time writer Gary Whitta and shot beautifully by the Hughes brothers, it tells the story on one man and the book he carries. That man is Eli, (Denzel Washington) who is heading west to a place he believes he is being summoned to. You see Eli is carrying a book that he must take to a place where it will be safe, but this is no ordinary book. The book he carries is the last King James edition Bible and he believes he will be protected until he brings it to its destination. Along the way he often runs into people who want to take the book from him, but he is not to be stopped from his quest. Things do take a little detour after he stops in a town to re supply. It seems that there is one man who knows the importance of the Bible, and he has spent years trying to find one. That man’s name is Carnegie (Gary Oldman), and he just happens to be in the town that Eli has chosen to visit. After a mishap in a bar, Carnegie decides he could use a man like Eli and makes him stay until morning to take him up on his offer. Carnegie has a woman he owns named Claudia (Jennifer Beals) and uses her daughter Solara (Mila Kunis) to help persuade Eli to stay in town. When Eli refuses her advances, they instead talk and have dinner, in which before eating Eli recites a prayer. Hearing that prayer repeated in the morning, Carnegie knows that Eli must have the book he has been searching for. After an intense gun fight Eli and Solara escape, only to be hunted down later and trapped. We get our usually gray filter on the world, which once again has been destroyed by war. The story goes that after the war, the survivors burned all of the Bibles, believing that they were the cause of the war. The film is shot nicely and has some beautiful camera shots, and after nine years since their last feature, it seems the Hughes brothers are still on their game. The story is ok, but both Denzel and Gary Oldman both do a great job in their performances. The story though does lack emotion and instead relies too much on its stars to make the movie work. I didn’t really understand the casting of Mila Kunis, unless they were just going for the looks angel. If you are like me you know the world has enough people telling us the world is going to end. So if you want to be told that everything is not good, then turn on the news, movies are suppose to make us feel good, and this in one movie that won’t make you feel that way.

Brian Taylor