The Book of Eli

Director: Hughes Bros.

Cast: Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis, Toma Waits, Michael Gambon

Year: 2009

Genre: Sci-Fi / Action

Rating:

Cinema-Reader – 6.8

IMDB – 7.6

FilmAffinity – N/A

(click picture for Trailer)

Cinema-Reader Synopsis:

Within an apocalyptic future after a world wide war that has devastated the planet making core resources just essentials for surviving, a single man is on a trip heading west carrying with a priceless object, a book. The book of the books: the Holy Bible.

After the book was deemed as one of the triggers that caused the ultimate war on earth; Eli (Denzel Washington), its bearer, will protect what is believed to be the very last copy with his life if necessary and no thoughts of handling over to anyone else, above all to Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a self named governor of an small town that rules it with heavy hammer and willing to use the book as a weapon in order to spread out his ownership among the area.

Cinema-Reader Review:

With an atmosphere that evokes the pure style of the Sci-Fi classic Mad Max, the film is a well made action movie with a solid but not brilliant script.

Besides all factors can point out straight to this (genre, contest and plot), the movie doesn’t fall into the ease of the usage of X effects, overused in nowadays movies without measure.

This is some I am grateful of, due to is being some years since industry lost the north when talking of visual effects in action movie. Thus, and according my meek opinion, the point of actions movies and what makes me enjoy them might be the story; developing afterwards the effects around it and not in the other way round.

Despite this plus, something is missed out on the film.

Just the reliable pair heading the cast (even though if Oldman is far away from his always remembered performance of a corrupted cop in Leon) saves the movie in a way.