The Book of Eli

I think it may be time to call a halt on the post-apocalyptic road movies. The Book of Eli, directed by the Hughes Brothers, came out this year right on the heels of The Road, which had a very similar storyline. It's planet Earth, after some sort of nuclear war, and times are tough. Real tough. There's lots of cannibalism, soap is hard to come by, and people don't wear a lot of bright colors.

Denzel Washington stars as Eli, and he says he's been walking west for 30 years. It seems to me that someone walking for that long would have been able to criss-cross the continent several times, but he must have made a lot of stops. In this film he stumbles upon a little town run by a despot (Gary Oldman, at his most sinister). It seems that Oldman is in search of a Bible, which are now rare because they were all burned after the war. Washington has one.

The main problem with this film is that it didn't have anything different to say than any number of films that have dealt with the same subject. The Bible angle inserts a lot of spirituality into the mix, but unless you're a Holy Roller it doesn't have much of an impact. There are also a lot of logistical questions--where do they get their fuel? How do they grow food? At the end of the film Washington reaches Alcatraz, which has a set up that defies everything that has come before.

It's not a terrible film--there's some good action, including a shootout at an old house with a pair of old coots (Frances de la Tour and Michael Gambon). Washington is his usual, stoically resolute self, and Oldman chews the scenery. Jennifer Beals and Mila Kunis provide the eye candy, though in this setting they're not exactly daisy fresh. The photography, as is mandatory in this type of film, is drained of almost all color. I would recommend this topic be held off-limits unless a filmmaker has something startling new to say.