Also I can't understand why one the ______ has his death glorified and lasts so long. You'll know when you see it.
Basically a cult thing, nothing reallly plot twisting. Some how Eli is a wasteland samurai of some kind. Denzel Washington sells.
It was alright but not great.
Ok, I watched Book of Eli last night. First off, the sets and backdrops were great. They almost looked inspired by Fallout 3 somehow...as silly as that sounds.
The opening scenes are great as well, and did a good job setting the tone. The fight scenes were well-choreographed and fun to watch. Unfortunately, it went downhill from there. The dialog was one cookie-cutter action movie cliche after another. It might not bother me if I hadn't watched so many action movies growing up...it got to a point that I could almost predict what the characters were going to say next. I was trying really hard to like what I was seeing, but a lot of the dialog just made me groan.
Now, I know that most action and sci-fi movies are far-fetched. Book of Eli had some moments that were so hard to swallow that all I could say was, "oh. come. on." Especially pronounced were things like the number of opportunities that the bad guys had to kill Eli and just didn't do it for one reason or another. It's like the thugs knew he was the main character so they shouldn't kill him without orders from the boss. Another favorite was Mila Kunis's character going from a slave girl walking around the wasteland in professionally-applied make-up and a brand new outfit from The Gap to a badass wasteland warrior over the course of 10 movie minutes. That kind of thing can work, but not in a movie with such a serious tone. This film was trying hard to be something, but it didn't know what that thing was.
The theme of the righteous defender of The Word juxtaposed with the false prophet that uses religion as a tool of control was an interesting idea, but at the end of the day the execution was heavy-handed and clumsy. Some of the metaphors practically jump out of the screen and slap you in the face. I found myself thinking, "ok, I get it...I GET IT ALREADY...please, move on" way too often. I kept thinking that if the movie had been 12 hours long they could have properly set up the story, but as it was it felt like the "Cliff Notes" of a much better plot and characters. At other times I thought it might have been a better film if they'd made a more conventional "post-apoc samurai" film and dropped the religious overtones altogether. It all ended up feeling pretty cobbled-together and unplanned. They also couldn't decide if they were going for an authentic post-apoc setting or a stylized one that's more tailored to our real-world culture and values. Either would have been ok, but they kept switching back and forth and the two perspectives contradicted each other on more than one occasion. Did the writers have a disagreement that they could resolve?
Anyway, there were some highlights, but all in all it was an interesting idea with good technical direction and a decent cast that was ruined by a sloppy screenplay. I'd say C-, and that's being generous. Given another hour of set-up and some serious re-writing of the screenplay it probably could have been a solid B.
» Sat Aug 14, 2010 7:27 am 
