Review of The Book of Eli (2010) by Chads — 18 Jan 2010

"The Book of Eli" is what happens when a good actor realizes that spectacle, more so than a story calibrated with great acting and direction, is what it takes to remain a box office draw. Depressing as it may be to watch two-time Academy Award-winning Denzel Washington stab, stab, stab and shoot, shoot, shoot his way through a comic book-inspired sci-fi/western, he does elevate the jejune material with enough elan to obfuscate the pandering aspect of being an upgrade of some second-tier star like Vin Diesel, as he slums in this decidedly B-movie, for the kids.

Everyday Eli writes the book, and Washington's mien suggests an intellect that's up to the task. Whereas Diesel and others of his ilk possess the brawn, Washington has the brawn, and brains, to play a bad-ass prophet, which is needed to downgrade the film's final revelation from being ludicrous in its chutzpah to simply amusing.

(Riddick could probably write "The DaVinci Code".) Far from being cerebral, "The Book of Eli" does imagines a world with no religion after religion brought about the old world's annihilation.

The moviegoer sees the inherent paradox of the John Lennon lyric(from "Imagine"), in which a person such as Solara(Mila Kunis) would indeed reap emotional benefits from having a spiritual side, while at the same time, a man like Carnegie(Gary Oldman) acts as the go-between for god and his worshippers, and reduces god's word for the enabling of mass anaesthetization.