Getting biblical in a post-apocalyptic world

Imagine: The world is a post-apocalyptic wasteland without much greenery. Technologies resembling designer Ray Bans and iPod-like musical devices float around to those lucky enough to find them, and there is only one King James Bible left in the world and many wouldn’t know what it was if you asked them. That’s pretty much the gist of The Book of Eli.

Denzel Washington plays Eli (though, unless you paid close attention to the title, you wouldn’t know his character had a name until the last 30 minutes of the film), one of the few survivors of the ‘last war’ that caused a hole in the sky and the sun to come down and burn everything. While the world is still somewhat populated, a majority of the civilians were born after the war and have no knowledge of what they call the ‘other world,’ as in here and now.

From the beginning, it’s clear that Eli is different from everyone else left on the planet. While he does end up killing a lot of people, he does it in self-defense (unlike the hijackers on the road that set up traps for wanderers, planning to kill them, take their water and then eat them).

It’s clear that Eli is supposed to have some sort of moral code, though at times-like when he sees a woman being attack and raped, but continues to go about his own business-it’s a foggy one. His morality comes from his religious faith, stemming from his copy of the King James Bible-which he found because God led him to it and then told him to take it west.

Eli’s mission is very reminiscent of Old Testament bible stories (akin to Moses hearing the voice of God and following the commands). Eli has an astounding faith in his God and the audience wants to believe too, each time Eli is delivered from impossible situations. He fights off 10 men at a time and gets away without a scratch. Even when he is shot, Washington’s character just gets back up and continues walking west. He has a sort of superhuman strength about him that could only come from a higher power.

Every biblical story has good and evil though, and the sleazy, woman-hitting Carnegie (Gary Oldman) is no angel. Also a survivor of the ‘last war,’ Carnegie, a collector of books, wants to expand his power beyond the town he owns. He believes that the only way he can control the masses is with the power of the Holy Bible. Enter the conflict: Eli has what Carnegie wants and Carnegie is prepared to do whatever it takes to get it.

While The Book of Eli certainly puts a new twist on the post-apocalyptic genre, there are times when it feels like Christianity is being shoved down your throat. Many of the aspects of this new world are entirely unbelievable (and often laughable), considering that some of the characters, including Mila Kunis (the fact that she wasn’t mentioned until now shows you just how boring her character is), wear garb that looks too nice to not be designer.

Poor performance from major and supporting actors makes the characters uninteresting and forgettable and, ultimately, so is The Book of Eli.
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The Book of Eli
Directed by the Hughes Brothers
Now playing
1.5 out of 5 stars
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