It’s funny to think that one single element can ruin such a strong foundation in an instant. Come and join me dear reader on this emotional journey through one of my favorite subgenres. The Book of Eli is a visually appealing post-apocalyptic western that feels oddly refreshing. The world is fully fleshed out but the characters not so much. However, we won’t fully realize that until we’re halfway through the movie. I was loving The Book of Eli so much up until a certain point. All those days playing Fallout were coming back to me when it happened.
It felt like someone burst through the door after a long masturbation session and kicked me in the nuts. I won’t tell you what that moment was but if you check out the movie I’m sure you’re going to spot it right away. What I will tell you is that I’m an atheist and that is the main reason why I didn’t like this movie. If I have known that The Book of Eli is going to be a religious propaganda movie I wouldn’t watch it. Or I would watch it fully knowing what to expect. I love watching stuff like that as it already confirms my worldview.
I’m able to rationally pick apart events, characters, and concepts to the point their true agenda is revealed. And a bleak post-apocalyptic world is the perfect environment for the resurgence of religion, no one is arguing about that. It’s just the way they went about it that seems utterly unplausible and contrived. This is a shame since the directors are the Hughes brothers best known for their masterpiece Menace 2 Society. Although I much prefer their 2001 Gothic horror From Hell starring Johnny Depp.
The movie The Book of Eli is about a skilled survivor Eli who roams the post-apocalyptic wasteland with a single mission. He needs to get to San Francisco and deliver an important package. And you can probably guess what that package is. Visually, this is a striking movie with excellent special effects and cinematography. The opening scene is a fucking work of art as we witness the struggle for survival in a burnt-out forest reminiscent of WWI scenes in Verdun, France.
Even the action scenes are good with Denzel showing us his enviable huge knife skills. To make things even worse for me, the cast was fucking excellent. We have not only Titus Pullo AKA Ray Stevenson, but also Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis, and Tom motherfucking Waits! And this time he’s not way down in the hole like he was in The Wire. The movie shows us the scale of destruction with thousands of abandoned vehicles and destroyed bridges.
The vast empty land devoid of almost any life is an inhospitable and unforgiving place. And then it knees you in the stomach and punches you in the back of the head with its religious content. Luckily, Gary Oldman had a few things to say about this but he was the only one out of all these people. I was expecting something more along the lines of The Road. And what I got was something entirely else. So I had to watch Mad Max 2 just to get the taste out of my mouth. Greetings from The Humungus, The Lord Humungus, The Warrior of The Wasteland, The Ayatollah of Rockenrolla!
Directors: Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes
Writer: Gary Whitta
Cast: Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis, Ray Stevenson, Jennifer Beals, Tom Waits
Fun Stuff: Denzel Washington is the executive producer of this movie so that can shed a little light on why it had strong religious themes as he himself is a devout Pentecostal Evangelical Christian.
IMDb Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1037705/
*SPOILERS IN HERE* I have a prety similar taste, but i completely have to disagree on this one with you.. With all respect, to be honest, i find it a pretty dumb review. Makes me think you weren’t paying attention..:p I haven’t seen such a good post-apocalyptic movie in a very long time and ESPECIALLY the completely unique storie adds to that. The bible thing should be seen as a metaphor to hope.. The Oldman character wants to rule (like the pope nowadays) by having the bible and therefore giving people hope, which equals binding them to him so he will get powerful. (link to the past, with all the crusades and stuff) Pretty original if you ask me (not the stupid milking of worn out ideas as is the case so often), and with some imagination even very logic if you look at the total chaos the people live in.. Something should bind them and what is more binding than a religion??! Besides that, the cause of the apocalypse is quite logic too, with a huge nuclear war and a lot of blind people afterwards. So i think the story is very powerful!! Especialy if you find out that Washington was blind all the time and he knew all of the bible out of his head! Came as a roundhouse kick to the face for me..:p Thought there should come some plottwist, but couldn’t figure it out till the very last moment, which is good;) And then the whole surroundings, special effects and fight sequences which are all top notch!!! Almost Matrix alike.. Washington has never been this cool! And the fights are realy stylish, somethimes made me think of Sin City.. Kunis though should indeed have been left aside;) But hey, on the other hand, she does look good..:D Hope you watch it again and write somethin worthy, because i think hollywood should be stimulated to come up with these original things!;)
Anyhow, keep up the good work!:D Like reading your stuff..;)
Floris!
Well, first of as I said, the first part of the movie was awesome, and the whole vibe and feel of it was phenomenal, especially the scene with the rape, when I saw that he did not get involved I almost cried of happiness. A lot of this good vibe continues till the end, but I think that my review was hugely influenced by the Bible thing. In my opinion he should be carrying some other book, for example a book about surviving in the wild, but the most important book after the nuclear apocalypse is certainly not the bible, it should be a book on physics, or biology or for that matter any other science book. Leave the bible out and this is a phenomenal movie, I really do not like the propaganda of religion and this movie would be great without it(purely personal opinion). Although it is certainly conceivable that the bible is considered the most important book after the destruction, it`s just that I do not like it :D This can be argued in many ways, and basically there are two paths, a path of reason(without hope or some reasonable hope :D) and path of hope(without reason – religion), so far as a human kind we have not figured out a path that combines them. As for the blindness thing goes, at the end I dismissed it as impossible, but I did not see the movie twice, which I am certainly going to do. It felt to me that it is impossible for him to be blind and do all the stuff that he did. But this is the replay value catch and a great one that directors used carefully for that wow effect…I am glad that we agree on the Kunis thing, she is cute but the part sucks…
Thank you for the comment, I really liked it, keeps me on guard and helps with the writing…