"The Book of Eli," the first flick in nine years from Albert and Allen Hughes, seems pretty cool on the surface: Washington's character, Eli, journeys westward across the barren landscape in pursuit of some ethereal goal. Hell-bent on interrupting Eli's trek is the slumlord Carnegie a wonderfully slimy Oldman. Although the premise is interesting think "The Road" (2009) but with more guns and a spiritual twist the execution is less than stellar.
The most disappointing aspect of the movie which would have made an excellent (if self-important) action romp is its contrived pacing. Often, I felt tricked into engaging with the story only because key information was withheld until just the right moment. Worse, the revelation of the final plot twist, which comes in the film's last 10 minutes, essentially renders the tension and suspense of the previous 40 minutes moot.
There's an old-school feeling of deus ex machina about the manner in which the movie progresses. And while this strategy falls in line with the spiritual elements of the plot, it runs aganst the grain of its penchant for gritty realism. As a result, the film is inconsistent and difficult to take seriously.
Visually, "The Book of Eli" takes cues from both better- and worse-made post-apocalyptic films. In particular, the central image of one man set against sweeping, wide-angle vistas of abandoned infrastructure owes a lot to Terry Gilliam's excellent "12 Monkeys" (1995), but like the dreadful "Terminator Salvation" (2009) assumes that "post-apocalyptic" means "brown and gray."
Even the blood that spurts forth when the samurai-like Eli wields his huge serrated blade is dark and brownish and somehow blends into the surroundings. The violence is brutal but somewhat clinical very choreographed and almost unobtrusive, mostly filmed in silhouette. There's none of "The Fly" (1986) director David Cronenberg's shocking body horror here, where blood is a vibrant and unnatural thing the weird miasma of the inside coming out.
Instead, the film features the kind of castrated, no-consequences violence that characterizes brainless slash-fests like "300" (2006). Not that it doesn't look cool, of course, especially when framed against a deserted overpass. This treatment of gore, however, once again reveals the inconsistencies that plague the movie. While the first act casts the work as a purely action-oriented film, by the end, it has incorporated cloddish social commentary, dime-store philosophy and a fair amount of Jesus imagery not to mention a sappily edited denouement. The thing can't make up its mind.
The saviors of "The Book of Eli" are its protagonist and antagonist. Thankfully, Washington and Oldman are great character actors who deftly walk the fine line between melodrama and camp, imbuing Eli and Carnegie with a sense of comic book-like grandeur. Their interactions, especially the way Eli gets under Carnegie's skin, make for great and entertaining cinema. But they don't engage often enough to create the playful comic-book feel that could sustain the movie, a la "Sin City" (2005) and "Watchmen" (2009).
The leading men's performances provide viewers with a stark relief from Mila Kunis's portrayal of Solara, who melodramatically sulks around the monochromatic world dressed in what could best be described as hipster-survivor-chic, nonchalantly sporting a pair of aviator sunglasses. Her performance is good, not great, and serves only to fragment the film's aesthetic even further.
"The Book of Eli" disappoints because it tries to be too many things at once, but doesn't really succeed at any of them on more than a superficial level. It's an amalgamation of various cinematic styles and tropes (the mysterious warrior is right out of Japanese cinema) that never quite gel. Most importantly, it's not terribly entertaining. This has all been done before, and done better. Be like Eli: pop in your headphones, crank up the volume and walk on past the theater.
