Review - The Book of Eli

I Swear some day I will review a good movie, until then, please enjoy my review of THE BOOK OF ELI, it will be shorter and have less slow motion than the movie, I promise.

Quick review:
2 stars out of 5

the good - action sequences a very well done and Densel Washington is pretty bad ass
the bad - Gary Oldman gives his worst performance of his career, the movie's subject matter makes the viewer certain there will be a heavy handed message, and they'd be right.
the ugly - movie has zero sense of fun, and more slow motion walking than any movie ever made. It's basically Waterworld, but in desert.

The movie's called THE BOOK OF ELI. It's about a lone man (Densel Washington) in a post-apocalyptic wasteland on journey to protect a book from motorcycle rapist cannibals and Gary Oldman. Also, Meg Griffin is in the movie (that's not a jab a Mila Kunis, it's a jab at the worthlessness of her character). The Book has power and Gary Oldman wants it. For those of you with any religious background you can probably figure out what book Densel's character Eli is carrying. If I remind you this is an American movie, you should only need one guess. (SPOILERS) That's right, Eli is protecting the last Bible in existence. Because after the bombs went off, everyone decided that the Bible was to blame and so humanity destroyed every one except the one Eli is protecting.
First of all, regardless of my personal and complicated thoughts about religion, it is stupid on an unbelievable scale to suppose that humanity would ever be able to eradicate the Bible, or the Torah, or the Koran, or any other holy book for that matter. The thing about faith is that it always finds a way to endure and actually grows stronger in a time of desperation. The saying "there are no atheists in foxholes" has nothing to do with the power of God but everything to do with the fact that people in a powerless situation need to put there trust in something greater than themselves.
(END SPOILERS AND RANT) But I digress, Eli is traveling along, protected by the power of the book, which means he gets to be Jason Statham, Rambo, the Terminator, and Batman all rolled into one when he has the book on him. Unsurprisingly, he draws the attention of one Carnegie played but Gary Oldman. Carnegie is impressed that Eli can kill his employees with ease and offers him a job, which is an interesting way to get hired. Somehow I doubt beating up active duty security personnel would land me a job offer, not matter how rapey they were acting. Blah, Blah, Blah, Carnegie tries to kill Eli multiple times and (SPOILER) loses most of his henchmen in the process. (END SPOILER) Once Eli is on the run from Carnegie, he is followed by Meg Griffin, who promptly gets locked in a well, sexually assaulted, and taken hostage, you know, useful sidekick activities to keep the hero from doing anything constructive with his time. Blah Blah Blah, stupid plot twist, the movie ends. We are all meant to leave with some kind of hopeful feeling and deep thought. Mostly I was just pissed that an 80 minute plot was stretched to two hours by adding 40 minutes of characters in sun glasses, with weapons, walking in slow motion through a desert wasteland. The movie, is dark, depressing, and self-important. Eli is a man of faith, but not a man of many morals. Oh sure, he follows the two major ones, don't rape and kill woman, but he's behavior is often questionable if not outright cruel or irresponsible. In this way, he is very much like the old biblical heroes, many of whom performed as many reprehensible acts as they did good. In many cases there very status as heroes would be debatable to our modern sensibilities. Taken in this light, THE BOOK OF ELI can be seen as a modern biblical fable told in an ancient style. The heroes are faithful and heroic, but messy, and the villains are worse. But intellectually stimulating as that might be, you still have a rather awful movie, with very little to say.

(Ranting and spoilers to follow) No review would be complete without discussing the ending. So Here it is, Eli is blind. Yeah, he's actually Daredevil. and the Book? it's in Braille. So when Gary Oldman finally gets the book, the one he sacrificed his whole security force to get, he can't read it. Also, his town revolts and kills him. Meanwhile, Eli and Meg Griffin have made it to Alcatraz where Malcolm McDowell, who looks like he should be locked up there, is building a library so we can rebuild the world. Thankfully, Eli has memorized the Bible and recites it to crazy hair Malcolm who just happens to have found a FRICKIN' GUTENBERG PRINTING PRESS IN THE APOCALYPTIC WASTELAND OF NORTH AMERICA AND DRAGGED THE HEAVY BASTARD OUT TO ALCATRAZ ON A DINGHY!!!! So the final shot of the movie is the Bible, the most powerful book in the world according to this movie, reprinted into a leather bound book (where did the leather come from? I bet it was dead cannibals.) and place on the shelf next to the Koran and the Torah, and some other eastern religious stuff. This final shot really looks like a lame attempt to pretend that the entire 120 minutes preceding it wasn't about how the Bible is the greatest book ever. "Please don't get mad, billions of non-Christians throughout the world. See? we put it between the Koran and the Torah, because those books are special too! What's that non-Abrahamic faiths? Where's your book, try the Blasphemy for Dummies section, am I right guys? Guys? What?"