Belated Movie Review: The Book of Eli

As with all my reviews, there will be spoilers.  You were warned.

The most succinct way to sum up "The Book of Eli" is "The Road II: With a Vengeance".  Basically it took the same concept as "The Road", gave the wanderer a more specific purpose, made him much more of a badass, and gave us a more specific enemy than "everyone".

The same concepts are present in both movies:

1. Humankind has suffered a terrible tragedy, hinted in both movies as being a nuclear war.

2. The landscape is blighted, nothing grows, the food chain is destroyed, and humans are living like scavengers.

3. Artifacts we now take for granted are precious treasures in this blighted future.

4. If you aren't strong or resourceful, other humans will kill and eat you.

Hell, they even look the same, in terms of filmography:





The primary difference is the plot device.  In "The Road", the dad simply wants to protect his kid long enough to see him to some supposed better land.  He dies just as the kid encounters the family he never had.  In "The Book of Eli", Denzel Washington is transporting a similar burden, except this time it's the memorized copy of the King James Bible, which Gary Oldman desperately wants as a method of controlling people and building his empire.

The "Book of Eli" is weak in that respect.  It places far too much importance and wanton bloodshed on obtaining the last known copy of the Christian Bible, implausible given the Gideons.  And if he wanted the Bible only to use its words as a method of bringing people under his control, why not just make it up himself and write it down, a la Joseph Smith?  Make it sound reasonably similar, call yourself a prophet, and start from scratch.  Why go to the trouble of basically starting a mini-war with a guy who you think is carrying a copy?

Basically, "The Book of Eli" ends as kind of a self-righteous Christian entry into the apocalyptic genre of movies and story telling.  It's the religious version of Mad Max, if Max is a Christian trying to protect a copy of the Bible.

In this respect, the movie is very much a betrayal from its trailer.  In the trailer we see Gary Oldman's villain character consumed with catching the Denzel Washington character's book because the book "is a weapon".  Oh?  What kind of weapon?  Launch codes for the remaining nukes?  Directions to the remaining military bases?  Some kind of supernatural book of spells?  Alas, no.  The "weapon" is simply the desire for control of a blighted people who would as soon eat you as to read a book.

Like "The Road", it was a good journey, but unlike it, a disappointing destination.