With the manyproblems facing the world, a strong undercurrent of apocalyptic anxiety runsthrough contemporary culture. The Roadis the recent masterpiece of apocalypse cinema and it’s a hard trail to followfor TheBook of Eli. The landscape of both movies is strikingly similar.Like The Road, the new film bydirectors Albert and Allen Hughes (FromHell) follows a man on a journey across a dark land ruined by globalcatastrophe, its forests turned to stumps, its prairies to ash and the sky intoa gray shroud against the fitful sun. Millions have perished and civilizationhas crumbled. Roaming the ruins are Mad Max gangs, raping and pillaging,killing the frightened survivors pushing their few possessions in shoppingcarts down empty, rubble-strewn highways.
Theheroic protagonist, Eli, is played by Denzel Washington, implacable under hiswatchman’s cap and dark glasses, yet moved to kindness by the hunger of one ofthe smallest creatures, a mouse. He shares a morsel of his skimpy food with thehungry rodent in a ruined home where he spends the night. Unlike the wandereralong TheRoad, played by Viggo Mortensen, Eli is more than an ordinary man.He is an inexplicable superhero with incredible martial arts swordsmanship. Elican decimate a platoon of goons with nothing but kicks and a sharp blade.Bullets bounce off himbut not always in a patchy script that reaches forprofundity and sometimes comes up short.
In The Road, Mortensen traveled with his son,but in TheBook of Eli, Washington’sonly companion is a King James Bible, oversize and bound in black, a treasurein a world where reading has largely been forgotten. When Eli wanders into atown that half resembles Tombstoneor Dodge, he discovers that its tin pot ruler, Carnegie (Gary Oldman), is alsoa voracious reader.
Seatedbehind the desk of his tattered art deco office in the decayed bijou thatserves as his headquarters, Carnegie is studying a biography of Mussolini. Thelife of the great dictator might be inspiring, but the book Carnegie desiresmost is the Bible. He’s not seeking the spiritual sustenance Eli found in itspages but a source of power. As with many princes who masked their avarice inthe guise of religion, he hopes to use the text for his own ends.
Thescreenplay has moments that are implausible and senseless within the film’sfictional universe, the sort of glitches that can intrude when too many hiddenhands tinker with the story. However, the movie is elevated by the rivalry forthe book, representing the good and bad uses of religion and the power of thewritten word, by opposing characters embodied by a great pair of actors. Washington endows Eliwith the soft inner light of dignity and conviction in what he sees as a God-givenmission to carry the book the west, exact destination unknown. As the villain,Oldman dominates many of the film’s memorable scenes. Carnegie is a tightlywound psychopath, a fulminating Captain Ahab limping rapidly on crutches afterbeing shot in the leg by Eli in a firefight three-quarters through the movie.The supporting cast is also effective. Tom Waits brings wary eccentricity tohis role as a shopkeeper in Carnegie’s town and Mila Kunis is believable as thetown girl who becomes intrigued by Eli’s quest.
