‘Book of Eli’ needs rewriting - Military Movies - Military Times

‘Book of Eli’ needs rewriting

Hollywood is feeling rather post-apocalyptic these days. Hard on the heels of “The Road,” a starkly beautiful film about the strength of the human spirit, comes “The Book of Eli,” which is both a little less bleak and a lot more problematic.

It has the genre’s bedrock requisite, a steely protagonist wandering the blasted wastes of a dying civilization, in this case 30 years after what is referred to, just once, as “the flash.”

He is Eli (Denzel Washington), making his way west — always west — with a very specific purpose, carrying a big machete, a shotgun, a pistol and a pack containing a leather-bound book that he reverently reads each night and treats as if it’s a priceless treasure of the ages.

His antagonist is Carnegie (Gary Oldman), the tin-pot despot of a small town whose cadre of enforcers, led by Redridge (Ray Stevenson, forever Titus Pullo on HBO’s defunct “Rome”), holds tenuous sway over the raiders and drifters who come and go.

Carnegie badly wants the book Eli is carrying and is willing to inflict any measure of pain and suffering to get it because he is convinced it will let him tighten his grip over his sheeplike flock.

It’s purported to be the last extant copy of this particular title, all others having been rounded up and burned after the cataclysm because, as Eli explains, “Some people say the book is what started the war.”

So what is this tome? Even half-alert viewers will get it long before the film spells it out. Let’s just say it’s a “good” book. Yes, the whole thing is a religious parable, a riff on the question of whether religion is a weapon of control for self-serving tyrants and charlatans or a path to peace, harmony and salvation for the just and righteous.

For the longest time, director-siblings Albert and Allen Hughes and rookie screenwriter Gary Whitta avoid staking out their own position. This creates a hole at the film’s center that combines with several draggy sequences to make it feel longer than its two-hour running time.

Still, no film with Washington and Oldman is a total write-off. The former flashes his usual commanding presence, while the latter continues to refine the kind of unhinged nut he has played before.

But they have a hard time overcoming Whitta’s decision not to offer a shred of background on either of their characters.

It’s wholly unclear how the rather scrawny and unimposing Carnegie came to or maintains his position of power.

And Eli has several intense fight scenes that reveal he has the combat skills of a rabid ninja SEAL, but we get no clue as to how he came by them.

The film eventually picks a side on the central question it raises as it haltingly fills in the blanks on Eli’s quest — the side that basically ignores countless religious wars that have dogged the entire span of human history right up to today.

In doing so, the film asks viewers to swallow a series of increasingly dubious miracles that culminates in an odd sojourn to Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay.

There’s an intriguing premise buried within “The Book of Eli,” but the shaky grip that the Hughes brothers and Whitta have on a theme loaded with figurative land mines likely will leave viewers on both sides of the fence feeling shortchanged.

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Rated R for graphic violence, language, sexual assault.

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Got a rant or rave about the movies? E-mail cvinch@atpco.com.