Monday, January 25, 2010

The Book of Eli (a review)

The Book of Eli
(a review and critique)





Did you like TAKEN? Was it fun watching Liam Neeson kick some a**? Well, this movie stars Danzel Washington and the best part is watching him kick a**! Unfortunately, there's not that much of it and the rest of it is a bit of a mess in this post-apocalyptic story that has a man named Eli (aka Denzel) marching west. The real story is about the confrontation betwene Eli and a man named Carnegie (played by Gary Oldman), who is the mayor of a small town that Eli passes through to recharge him iPod and trade some valuables (like gloves) for fresh water. You see, Denzel has something valuable, something important, something that Oldman has been searching for. At first Carnegie will try to get Eli to join him, and when that doesn't work he will go after Eli to get what he has.

Now, there should be a lot of questions, like what is Eli carrying? And what happened to make the world this post-apocalyptic mess? Well, what Eli is carrying is a Bible. It's never quite made clear what happened to the world, but when it did religion was blamed and every bible was destroyed. Eli has the last remaining one and he has had visions that he needs to take it west. The mayor wants it because it can inspire people so he can turn his small town into a big town. There are a few action scenes that are filmed with style by the Hughes Brothers (i.e. the morons who ruined Alan Moore's From Hell), but there just isn't anything else to it. I suppose it's supposed to be a modenr take on a western where a guy drifts through a town, blah, blah, blah, but that doesn't excuse the lack of ANYTHING else being there. Overall, the movie can be kind of cool and the action scenes are kind of fun, but the rest you can just fast forward through.

I don't know...I had planned on posting all the things that didn't make sense in the movie but there are so many of them that it was taking too long. Maybe I'll come back and do it, but probably not.

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