Post-apocalypse films are a dime a dozen, so what makes The Book of Eli so different? Not much, except an evangelical subplot that is not strong enough to be this film's savior.
t's a post-apocalyptic western, it's an evangelical tract, it's a road movie, it's a martial arts movie, it's a disaster movie, it's a graphic novel. It's equal parts The Road and The Robe, A Fistful of Dollars and Fist of Fury. It's Mad Max meets Left Be
I sat down to The Book of Eli expecting a lecture, and was instead treated to a rollicking action film that evoked the manic ultra-violence of Mad Max rather than the sensitive study of humanity of The Road.
I'm not going to give it away, but there's a final plot twist in this movie that is beyond absurd.
Globe and Mail
January 15, 2010
Really, it's just another prophet-in-the-wilderness tale -- not nearly as bad as those trailers would suggest, yet neither will your soul run any risk of enlightenment.
"The Book of Eli" falls prey to several of the problems that "The Road" had, and while it wasn't as big a failure as that film, it's still a lot of apocalyptic wasteland to get through.
The Hughes brothers' film feels more vibrant than the bleak Road, which was launched at us in November. Here the brothers show us the horror but somehow the staid and calm Denzel feels more approachable than the distraught and scrambling Viggo.
