The Book of Eli
Product Description
Eli walks alone in post-apocalyptic America. He heads west along the Highway of Death on a mission he doesn’t fully understand but knows he must complete. In his backpack is the last copy of a book that could become the wellspring of a revived society. Or in the wrong hands, the hammer of a despot. Denzel Washington is Eli, who keeps his blade sharp and his survival instincts sharper as his quest thrusts him into a savage wasteland… and into explosive conflict with a resourceful warlord (Gary Oldman) set on possessing the book. “We walk by faith, not by sight,” quotes Eli. Under the taut direction of the Hughes Brothers (Menace II Society), those words hit home with unexpected meaning and power.Amazon.com
With unflappable cool and surprising gentleness, Denzel Washington strides a bleak and barren world in The Book of Eli. Eli is headed west, but on the way, he passes devastation and squalor, and occasionally he must mete out some devastation o… More >> The Book of Eli
May 21st, 2010 at 10:28 am
This has to be the worst movie I’ve seen in a long, long time. A warmed over Christian fundamentalists wet dream. But it doesnt’ stop there. The movie is boring for long stretches, pretensiously shot in a greyish “artsy” tone, full of loopholes in its logic (not unlike actual fundamentalists) and a soaring tribute to stupidity…a world with hardly a drop of drinkable water or edible food yet somehow an endless supply of guns and ammunition…
I have now begun to doubt the integrity of actors that I actually liked; Washington and Oldman – did these guys read the script before signing on or were they duped?
If you have half a brain or even a modicum of taste avoid this movie like the plague. Rating: 1 / 5
May 21st, 2010 at 10:33 am
The dialogue in the film feels like it was all written in under 5 minutes. The plot is so bare bones that it could have (and should have) been a 10 or 15 minute short film. The twist is at first shocking and satisfying…but soon fades to “…so what?”
I give one star to films I wish I would have walked out of, and this certainly fits the bill. I started checking my watch about 40 minutes into the movie, and continued to do so every 5 minutes. It’s just not enough entertainment, plain and simple. Rating: 1 / 5
May 21st, 2010 at 11:43 am
This movie was obviously written by and for evangelical fundamentalist Christians, and I’m really mad that I was hoodwinked into spending money to see it. Stuff like this should come with a label: “Warning: Intended for Right-Wing Christians.” I might as well have invested in a Tim LaHaye book rather than wasting my time and money on this.
It is post-apocalypse. There was another world war, caused by religion, and after it was over (after the “flash” which burned almost everyone), people burned all the bibles, so that religion could never again destroy the world. Or so they thought.
Eli, played by Denzel Washington, is walking west across the United States, carrying a copy of the last Bible in the world. A “voice” told him to “go west” and carry the Bible. During his quest (when he’s not proselytizing), God protects him, enabling him to repeatedly chop off the heads and hands of his enemies. He encounters the ruler of a town who seriously wants the Bible, because if he has it, he can become all powerful. With the Bible, this ruler will be able to get people to do anything he wants them to do.
Eli escapes, however, and continues west to Alcatraz, where there is a group of people hoarding books and artifacts from the pre-apocalypse world. They have a printing press, of course, and promptly print thousands of copies of the Bible, to be re-distributed to the religion-damaged world— proving, once again, that you just can’t get rid of stupidity and superstitution.
Rating: 1 / 5
May 21st, 2010 at 1:37 pm
Denzel Washington in Left Behind Part 18? I’ll pass.
For once the critics are right. I was really looking forward to The Book of Eli. Boy was I disappointed. This is one of the most tedious and BORING films I’ve seen in many moons. As one critic said, it’s The Road Warrior without the car chases and The Road without the humanity. Yeah, well, it’s also Fallout 3 without any entertainment value whatsoever. The twist ending has got to be one of the worst (not to mention most laughable) I’ve ever seen. You might, like I, keep hoping that there’s something more to the film than what there is and then, when it’s finally over, wonder why it ever got made. A fine cast was totally wasted with this one. Zero stars for the worst film I’ve seen in a long time. Rating: 1 / 5
May 21st, 2010 at 2:45 pm
In short – this movie is horrible! First off, it has a blatant fundamentalist-evangelical theme. Mad-Max after the Rapture. Make a religious propaganda movie all you want but inform the audience what they’re getting themselves into. I feel I was dupped into watch something that made me feel very uncomfortable. In reading the many positive reviews here, it strikes me as troubling how many people have no trouble with the fundamentalist message of this flick – it didn’t even seem to register. Have fantasies of violence paired with a dubious religious agenda really become this mainstream? Is the new brand of hero a guy with a bible in one hand and a gun in the other? Even if it weren’t for all the evangelizing this movie is just a bad movie. Too many scenes with drawn-out gratuitous camera shots, dialog that is often cartoonish and so corny it made me cringe, over-the-top fight scenes (Kill Bill without the humor) and gratuitous violence (which I have no problem with were it not used to transport a religious agenda), a whole array of preposterous scenes: an old husband and wife team shooting it out with thugs using their cache of submachine guns, thugs shooting up a farmhouse with an arsenal of guns, bazookas & gatlin guns (!) only to miss the 2 main characters standing behind a wooden wall, hero being shot pointblank but not suffering a scratch (God protected him I guess), a teenage girl turning into the new road warrior without training, silly voice-overs, a civilization subsisting on almost no water, a guy taking 30 years to walk across the US, cannibal couple living in the middle of the waste lands but miraculously stocked up on a constant supply of fresh meat, thugs destroying their only bar in town just for the sake of destroying it (where d’we go to have a drink now boss…duh), awkward scenes abound (the saying-grace at breakfast scene), Hero shooting a crappy self-made kids bow with lethal precision and then neglecting to retrieve his valuable arrows in a land where everything is scavanged, and on and on. Tom Waits didnt you read the script before you signed on to this turkey? Denzil, Oldman what are you doing? Rating: 1 / 5