The Book Of Eli

So I completely understand where they were trying to go with this film, or better yet, what they were trying to accomplish with it. Here we have Denzel Washington as the toughest guy left on the face of the post-apocalyptic planet. He’s the only man left that seems to have any sense of morality or decency left inside of him. So he fights against those the wrongdoers. So the film is basically Denzel ripping through sets of bad guys one after another. The bad guy’s leader is played by Gary Oldman who is probably one of my favorite actors and does shine in this film in many scenes as the stereotypical ominous leader of the bad guy group. Watch the trailer in case you missed it.

The Book Of Eli Trailer Here

Like I said before, I know what they were trying to accomplish with this film – Denzel Washington fighting hordes of bad guys in post-apocalyptic American badlands, saturated filters used throughout, righteous path scriptures thrown in, epic slow motion shots and score – it should have worked, but for me, it fell awfully hard on its face. There was no story. What was Denzel trying to obtain? How did America become so torn apart? What purpose does Miley K serve besides on screen eye candy? All questions I needed to have answered and didn’t. And yes, I get that he was trying to bring a last copy of a KJV Bible to the new library, but that’s the driving force?

The fight scenes killed me too. They were like a bad composite of MORTAL KOMBAT mixed with the MATRIX and KILL BILL – didn’t leave me impressed in the slightest. Even when there was a cool kill shot, it was totally apparent that it was CG because it was pretty piss poor CG at that.

A lot of my friends told me this film was extraordinary, like it was the second coming, but for me it was a shot-in-the-dark attempt at a sweeping end-of-days epic with a great front man’s name attached to it. Not for me. Give me MADMAX, THE ROAD, or WALL-E any day over this flick.

Rating: 5/10
RottenTomatoes: 47%

**PS – I’m going to start adding RottenTomatoes rating to the films I watch. I will check what they rated the film after I have rated – don’t worry I won’t cheat.