Book of Eli, The

Well its 2010, a fact that disturbs the hell out of me. I remember being a kid and thinking 2010 would be some strange future with flying cars and jetpacks, but I’ll take the internet over those any day. What do kids today have to look forward to? All the predictions for the future these days are so bleak. If I were a little kid and instead of flying cars I was waiting for a cannibal apocalypse I might as well kill myself before I get eaten. But I will remain hopeful, that one day I won’t have to worry about protecting my son from a gang of roaming marauders who want to make him into soup. So now that we live in the future and I have full access to the complete knowledge accumulated from all of recorded history (thanks again internet!), I will use this magical portal to tell you what I thought of the first movie I saw this decade.

“The Book of Eli,” takes place in a future where some war, vaguely religious perhaps, has destroyed the world and made it really sunny for some reason. Denzel Washington plays Eli, a superman/prophet in possession of the last known bible on earth. I know what you are thinking but its better than it sounds. As far as action movies go it was pretty awesome in some parts, and pretty dumb in others. Denzel is pretty good, and Gary Oldman is as good as usual. Over all, this is pretty entertaining little film. It’s a little more light hearted than say, “The Road,” but what isn’t? And despite what at first seems to be an overtly religious theme, by the end it doesn’t feel as much like a made for the Christian channel movie. In the beginning it seems like Jesus with bullets, but by the end it’s just a movie about a guy killing people to protect something he cherishes. There is a twist ending that I'm sure someone else will spoil for you so I won’t, but you see it coming.

So the one thing that I find oddly silly is the advertising for this movie. Now remember I liked this movie, it was certainly a fun time at the multiplex. But some of the ads have been using quotes from critics, two of which stuck out in my mind. One was that this is “a perfect film,” and the second is that “Denzel has never been better.” *gasp* Really? Never? Not even in “Training Day” or “Malcolm X?” Holy shit!! A perfect movie, you say? Perfect? My stars, odds and bodkins, get me to the theater post haste!!!! I have seen very few perfect movies and I wouldn’t consider this one perfect. So instead of doing research like a good little journalist into who wrote these reviews, I instead will speculate. This time of year is notorious for shitty movies. It’s when the studios dump all their crap because they know you aren’t going to see anything anyway. So I’m sure they didn’t have much confidence in this film to beat out “Avatar” and they decided to write their own reviews or pay someone else to say something good (Corruption, eh? Whodda thunk it). Rest assured Hollywood exec who penned those outrageous claims, your movie doesn’t suck.