Review of The Book of Eli (2010) by Eric R — 05 Feb 2013

Its a great movie, however, Eli see's too much to be blind, infact he's the least convincing blind man I've ever seen. At the start when he stumbles across the abandoned shack, he takes his shades off to eat dinner, with his eyes exposed he looks at too many things, he leads with his eyes if you like, he clearly looks at his fingers as he goes to lick the food off, and in the morning when he wakes he looks out the window, as he does he scans what's outside with his eyes, looks up into the sunlight and 'squints'. i'm pretty sure a blind man doesnt 'squint' as light hits his face.

Consistently throughout the film he walks through unfamiliar surroundings as if he can see his path, he places his pack down on a number of occasions each time with perfect accuracy as if he can see the table or bar infront of him.

The action scenes equally point in the direction that he isn't blind, shooting people and animals, static and moving targets, with deadly accuracy, from fair distances, not only with guns but with bow and arrow. Now, had this been an action hero movie, and he possessed super human powers I could understand, but this film takes itself seriously, it trys to tell a realistic, post apocalyptic story, so they should have tried harder to make him more convincing so that when the twist at the end finally hits you can say "Oh yeah, he was blind, they did that well" and not the reaction which I had which was "What!? He was blind all along? F**k off!".

My personal gold standard for a good twist is Fight Club. It is so well done that you don't see it coming the first time you watch, then at the end it flashes back to show you what's going on, and theres loads that it doesn't flash back to (like the limo driver calling Ed Norton's character Mr Durden). But with Eli there's too many things that suggest his sight is fine, so its clearly a case of bad directing.

Believe it or not I really like the film, but I only gave it 3 stars, had they managed the twist better, convincing you at the end that he was blind, then I would have given it 5 stars.