REVIEW – Book of Eli
What is it with the resurgence of desaturated, post-apocalyptic, BAD, sci-fi fare these days? Now we can add Book of Eli to the list of films that just shouldn’t have been made. It’s not that it’s a terrible movie. It’s not. It just doesn’t have anything new to show us or tell us or whatever. I felt like I’d seen it a hundred times before.
Yep, there was some nuclear war thing thirty years ago. Yeah, shit people need’s kinda scarce. Yeah, some mean kingpin (in this case, Gary Oldman) has cornered the market on the shit folks need. Yeah, he wants something Denzel’s got. Yeah, Mila Kunis is hot. Yeah, they might as well have shot the whole damn thing in black and white. Yeah, there’s some great music. Yeah, there’s lots of recycled tech all over the place and most of it’s broken. Yeah, the costumes are straight outta Mad Max.
The only reason I can imagine for the Hughes Brothers even approaching this script is that they wanted to make a black Mad Max movie without the cool cars because cool cars must piss them off. Seriously. This is a well-made film with A-list talent. How they attracted this group of actors to this turd of a film is beyond me. Maybe they left out the script when they sent packages out to agents.
The only shining light here is the score and it almost makes it worth sitting through this mess. For some reason, however, three composers were needed. Hey, if you need two directors you gotta have at least three composers, right?
Look, since I’d seen this one a hundred times before I could have skipped this viewing. I’d suggest you skip it too and just listen to the soundtrack unless you’ve never seen anything like it in which case I’d suggest you crawl out of your cave more often. Please, please, please, if you want to see something great that’s in this vein, check out Children of Men instead.
