The Book of Eli

Hello, readers, and welcome to another sci-fi/action motion picture made during the last three years. Have you noticed any themes that reoccur throughout these films, or settings, sentiments and tropes that many have in common? Well, I have, and if I don't say so myself, it's getting awfully Armageddon-y at the cineplexes lately.

In the 200 to 2010 calendar year alone, viewers have been emotionally exhausted by the grotesque sadness that permeated "The Road;" underwhelmed by CGI disaster-porn in "2012;" and delighted at the self-aware "Zombieland," an amusing lark of a movie that reaped box office gold by parodying tropes from apocalyptic cinema of yesteryear and delving into weirdly meta-storytelling: Zombie Bill Murray anyone?

That brings us to 2010, when Warner Brothers unceremoniously dumped their attempt at a post-apocalyptic cash-in, "The Book of Eli," in the cruel hinterlands of the January theatrical market. It's no secret that studios release films with dubious box-office potential and of questionable quality in January and February, when executives can usually count on the unwashed movie-going masses to recoup at least most of their expenses but they aren't expected to market their releases or mount awards campaigns. January and February are like Hollywood's garage sale, and "The Book of Eli" was the fourth apocalypse tale I didn't know I wanted, and not unlike garage sale curios, it fell apart before my very eyes.

Any movie with a martial arts sequence gets my attention, if not my money. Most of my favorite action scenes involve the way of the open hand, and I'm more likely to forgive structural flaws and bad dialogue in movies built around those scenes.     

"The Book of Eli" has some visceral, adrenaline-infused fights, and its star, Denzel Washington, is an unparalleled purveyor of badassery, so I was excited when I bought my tickets. I wasn't disappointed when a few minutes into the story, Eli (Washington) is attacked by one of the marauding gangs that seem to populate every movie of this genre. Shot in silhouette, the scene is truly breathtaking, and it generates a level of excitement the movie fails to achieve again.

 Washington is the titular Eli, trudging through the hellscape that remains 30 years after an unspecified natural disaster everyone refers to as "The Flash" and protecting an important secret book. Eli stumbles into a dusty town run by a man named Carnegie (Gary Oldman), an end-of–the-world opportunist and avid reader.

Currency in this wasteland has been supplanted by bartering for rare goods, and in this rudimentary economy, books have a particular cache.

The plot surrounds Carnegie's attempts to recover Eli's book, first by tempting him with the offer of a night with a prostitute in Carnegie's saloon (a painfully bad Mila Kunis), and then by violence. Eli throws a few surprises and plot twists our way, but nothing that genre fans won't likely see coming.

The film, directed by the Hughes Brothers of "Menace II Society" fame, is made more frustrating by the ambition demonstrated in their efforts as well as some of the heady ideas kicked around in the script, because they hints at what the film could have been.

The transition from the thrilling fisticuffs in the action movie/post-apocalyptic Western during the first half to the staid meditation on faith and the power of religion is jarring, and none of the Hughes Brothers' conclusions are revelatory enough to justify the detour.

"The Book of Eli" promised to be an entertaining – if mindless –  popcorn movie, but the pretension and religiosity of its closing chapters quenched any goodwill that awesome fight scene had generated.