Movie Review: Book of Eli

The Book of Eli, which stars Denzel Washington, as a tote bearing "Odysseus" on a quest to go West in a post apocalyptic United States wasteland is not your everyday run of the mill end of days film. Directed by the Hughes brothers, the film lures in the audience from the opening scene with each carefully crafted situation encountered, the desperation and dilapidation of society unfolds. Washington gives an amazing performance as a traveler who is on a mission to bring his book to its home in an unknown western town, on the way he encounters different obstacles which bring his character to the ultimate revelation and binds the film's ending.

Mila Kunis and Gary Oldman also bring an exceptional edge to their roles. The former as Solara, a young woman who seeks more from her destroyed surroundings and reaches out to Washington as he inspires her to realize there is hope for the world; and the latter, a treacherous mayor of a collapsed ghost town in the deserts of the west.

Book of Eli takes its time to unfold, the timing of the picture I found to be especially effective in terms of laying out the absence of structure and time in the world portrayed. The deadened future has no calendar, days blend into cold nights, which run until a blistering sun provides no cheer just blistering heat and another day of bleakness. The cinematography brings to mind the same scarcity of resources that were also apparent in There Will Be Blood. I thought the grayness in the picture really struck a note well to relay a hellish existence where the simple things once taken for granted are now things worth dying over and how happiness is not something the living beings know much about. The metaphorical symbolism in the film is also something to look out for and is extremely well done.

So definitely go see it...and not just once! If you haven't seen it already, check out the trailer below: