After Man on Fire, that guy can do anything he wants, especially when he’s got Denzel Washington and budding star Chris Pine to work with, and you won’t hear any complaints out of me. As far as the subject matter is concerned, if this is half as good as Runaway Train, the Jon Voight-Eric Roberts classic, I’ll be one happy camper.

The Book of Eli

The layout of the apocalyptic junk in the desert is great.  I don’t understand why Busch would want to be the official beer of the apocalypse, but random product placement is no big deal.  The Road and Terminator: Salvation both went for this exact same look, and this movie blows them both out of the water with no problem.  A congestion of rusted cars in the desert is stacked just so; blasted highway bridges make great framing shots for a stoic Denzel wandering the wilderness.  Why can’t other movies get it right like this?  The usual suspects are here, too–road agents in goggles, motorcycle gangs, and the like.  An opening shot of Eli hunting makes for a great nuclear winter scene, but doesn’t quite match the overall setting.  Atticus Ross (Nine Inch Nails alum) does the soundtrack, and it sounds a lot like the last Nine Inch Nails album, all deep synth and pianos, which works well for this kind of movie.

We can only assume that, in this alternate universe, Sarah Palin became president and used the Bible as an excuse to start World War III, because the survivors have made it their business to burn the remaining copies.  Hey, it caused the war that burned a hole in the sky, we have got to get rid of every last single one.  Eli has to take his great copy of the Bible all the way across the country to find its rightful place.  Of course he runs into a town where head honcho Carnegie (Gary Oldman, doing his usual crazy bad guy routine) and henchman (Ray Stevenson, the guy who played Punisher) cause all kinds of problems with their band of goons.  Carnegie wants to use the Bible to expand his political power, justified by the Holy Book. 

We all know where this is going, though Denzel wanders the town for a bit.  The gadgeteer shop owner is the Gyrocopter pilot from The Road Warrior, which the movie pulls from constantly in the last half.  He meets sidekick Solara (Mila Kunis) and her mom (blinded in the war), and beats up all kinds of grungy people at the bar.  Soon, Eli will talk with Solara about the rampant materialism of the world before, a nice subtext to the inevitable mayhem, which is well on its way.  Before long, it’s high noon in town, and the great action starts in earnest.  The shoot-outs are near flawless, the action is all top-notch production stuff.  This is all good; the action sets are well thought out, and the vehicle mayhem is real Mad Max stuff. 

I won’t spoil the ridiculous ending, but it’ time to point out some of the really glaring issues.  First, Eli and Solara stop while walking through the desert to sleep in a nuclear power plant smoke stack.  This is stupid on so many different levels, it is hard to comprehend how it made it into this movie.  The inside of one of these smoke stacks has machinery and stuff in it, not a flat dirt floor and a fire place, and they don’t have random nuclear power plants standing next to the highway in the desert, and why would you sleep in a nuclear power plant, anyway?  It makes for great imagery, but it makes zero sense.  The next flub is when a 80s era Suburban flips nearly ten times.  After this, Solara starts the car up and goes on her merry way.  My family once owned this very vehicle, and I can assure you it would turn to trash and garbage in any accident.  I was also confused when Oldman’s goons started shooting a civil war era Gatling gun out the back of their armored truck.  I’ll ignore these problems for the higher points of the film–lightning flashing when Eli is shot, for instance, which is great in this kind of Biblical-themed material. 

In the incredibly weak (by comparison) third act, we are treated to some awful green screen (they just can’t get it right in any movie ever) and a mustachioed Malcolm McDowell doing his usual shtick.  The studio must think the audience cannot follow anything, because Denzel does an awful monologue voice-over at the end which is awful, and that much worse because it is unnecessary.  The studio also has to throw in some political correctness at the end, when the Bible is placed on a shelf directly between the Torah and the Koran.  Clearly this movie cannot endorse Christianity as the one true religion, which the entire movie implies as a pretext, but that would be much too offensive for the delicate moviegoers.  This tacked-on crap is pretty ludicrous, and only touches on the big three religions.  And speaking of Christianity, I know a peaceful Prophet would make for a boring movie, but I don’t ever remember the Disciples cutting people’s heads off in Acts.  No, this is definitely a job for the Old Testament.

With Denzel, The Book of Eli also features Mila Kunis, Gary, Oldman, Ray Stevenson, Michael Gambon and Jennifer Beals. The film is expected to be released in the U.S. on January 15th.

     
We also have some images from the film that we posted back in May.

Along with Washington, The Book of Eli also features Mila Kunis, Gary, Oldman, Ray Stevenson, Michael Gambon and Jennifer Beals. The film is expected to be released in the U.S. on January 15th 2010.

The Book of Eli is described as:

“The Book of Eli” tells the story of a lone warrior named Eli whose destiny is to save humanity. He guards a mysterious book which provides knowledge that could redeem society. Making his way across the desolate wasteland of near-future America, he faces challenge as the despot of a small makeshift town is determined to take possession of the book.

Joining Washington, Kunis and Oldman are Ray Stevenson, Michael Gambon and Jennifer Beals. The film is expected to be released in the U.S. on January 15th 2010. Make sure you check out the featurette on the movie released earlier this year as well.

Don’t get me wrong, seeing John Travolta go bug nuts was well worth the meager price of admittance, and the movie wasn’t terrible. I would equate it in both look and fell with an episode of CSI, as there is a noticeable lack of summer action movie destruction. Further more, most of the destruction that does happen seems to be a result of incompetent police work than any intention the bad guys may have. I was lured in by the prospect of police cars flipped around city streets like bowling pins.

As the ransom money races to the metro station, hostage lives in the balance, I thoroughly expected the bad guys to take out the caravan. They need not bother though, because the police managed to flip a taxi cab several times (keep on going, just ignore it and maybe it will go away), crash a motorcycle into a parked car (uh, should we stop?), and finally get t-boned by an ambulance, going airborne into a tunnel entrance. Travolta didn’t even have to lift a finger to crash the cop’s party.

Travolta as bad guy ‘Ryder’ is a great throw back to his wonderful villain days in the ‘classic’ John Woo films Broken Arrow and Face/Off. Travolta is a great bad guy, and he has a lot of fun as foul mouthed alpha male Dennis Ford. A cast of throwaway henchman is serviceable, if generic, and gets the job done. The initial takeover of the train is pretty smart and ruthless, but the intelligence of the takeover is overshadowed by the third act stupidity, maybe to balance out the cop’s earlier bungling.

Denzel Washington plays Garber, down on his luck as an MTA worker. There is a back story, but it doesn’t matter. Garber needs reconciling for past sins, and playing average guy in dangerous plot is his way of doing that. Denzel is the master of charming dialogue and everyman empathy, but Tony Scott films seem a bit under his pay grade, like an ugly guy dating a hot girl. Tony Scott can be great (Man on Fire) but is just as often atrocious (Domino). This movie falls in the middle, but it seems Denzel could have gotten a better pick of summer thriller, maybe one where a subway car actually gets derailed or blown up or something entertaining.

The idea of average Americans hijacked by some banker’s whacked out get rich quick scheme should have some allegorical weight these days. On the contrary, I failed to believe that any Wall Street type would be a total wuss, unable to deal with the prison economy. I was expecting white supremacists from the commercials, which would have been a better and more believable story. The gun fights seem much more intense than usual, there was a lot of blood. The unrealism isn’t in crazy action or regular plot holes, it’s more subtle.

Travolta is able to make a 15,000 percent return on his gold stocks, the real reason behind his heist. The terrorist goons miss the laptop streaming a young man’s internet chat session with his annoying girlfriend. This last bit is the source of the most realistic (and my favorite) part of the movie. Whilst the young man is on the ground, hands over head, his girlfriend demands that confesses he loves her, over streaming internet chat. “It’s a little hard to talk” he says to which she replies “Yes would have been a lot easier to say than ‘it’s a little hard to talk.’” For all the nonsense in this movie, they got the ‘ol ‘girlfriend whining about fealty at the worst possible moment’ bit right on the nose. James Gandolfini turns in a good role as the mayor too, for the record.

As the movie ends, Travolta departs in a cab with a marquee that says ‘Made in NYC.’ Yes movie, we got the message, New York capitalists ruined the economy, we are all hostage to their whims. But we have a lot to worry about these days, including ho-hum Tony Scott/Denzel Washington flicks that are long on flash, but low on substance.

    
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Described as “A post-apocalyptic Western, in which a lone man fights his way across America in order to protect a sacred book that holds the secrets to saving humankind”, it’s set to be released in January 2010. With the images, USA Today does have a write-up that may be worth checking out.

Starring Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis, and Ray Stevenson, with a scheduled release of January 2010.

    
The film’s description is “A post-apocalyptic Western, in which a lone man fights his way across America in order to protect a sacred book that holds the secrets to saving humankind”. I kind of dig the Hughes Brother’s movies because I’m from that generation where Menace to Society was everybody’s favorite movii when it came out and Dead Presidents is in my mind and underrated film.

    
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