Like many films of the last ten years that have attempted a more stylish than average look, this one tints it’s image with color filters, giving it’s people and landscape the sun bleached look of bone that has lied exposed too long in the desert. Here I found the effect to be more successful than in other recent films, perhaps due to the fact that instead of being style just for style’s sake the film’s tone and story give itself a reason to look overexposed, drained of color, perhaps just a step away from the visual reality in which we find ourselves. The sets and characters of this film have, quite literally, been exposed to and bleached by some sort of fire from the sky and been left behind, forgotten, and existing most probably far longer than they were meant to. That’s not to say that the slick aesthetic choices employed here are all pragmatic and subtle, however. The Hughes brothers have always been visually flashy filmmakers and employ a treasure chest of fast paced editing techniques and unique bits of perspective to elevate the photography of the film higher than most that share it’s genre. That it manages this feat without buggering spatial continuity lends it extra brownie points. If for no other reason, Eli is at least worth checking out just because it looks rather pretty.
Where the film begins to falter is with the several at odds tones that struggle with each other for prominence throughout. Bits of over the top, limb mutilating, body count expanding action are often painfully juxtaposed by heavy handed ruminations about the nature of faith and the community building potential of organized religion. One moment Washington’s character is wholesale slaughtering townspeople like Marty McFly playing an old west shoot em up at the 7-11 and the next we are supposed to react empathically to him and a Christ like martyr, suffering for his beliefs and determination. The film’s slightly pretentious attempts at dishing out art film ponderings in the final act tend to ring hollow after it has already burnt so many calories attempting to dazzle us with impossible martial arts technique, dead aim shootouts, and pyrotechnic displays of devastation. The bouncing back and forth between these two agendas of being a “deeper” sort of film while also being a crowd pleasing, over the top actioner eventually undermines both goals. At one point, early in the film, it is established that ammo is very scarce and that loaded weapons are a scarcely seen rarity. Of course, this is forgotten any time the film’s pace needs to be picked up with a crazy action sequence and by the end we’re treated to grenades, rocket launchers, vehicle mounted high caliber machine guns, and enough piled up bodies to make Governor Schwarzenegger smile and spark up a celebratory cigar. Similarly, the ambiguity between whether or not Denzel is actually a warrior in the service of God or merely a zealot clinging to blind faith in the face of hopeless circumstances is dabbled with, but then tossed aside in the end where a rather definitive answer is offered. In this way, the film hints at exploring more interesting themes, but ultimately abandons them in favor of being crowd pleasing.
The performances are generally strong and, much like the visual style, serve to elevate the material. Denzel plays his character tense and reserved, successfully creating a screen presence with a sense of lethality that lends necessary credibility to his character’s need of being bought as an aged action hero. Gary Oldman, is dazzling as the film’s antagonist, a self appointed, power mad town head that is obsessed with obtaining the Washington character’s book. Oldman and Denzel are the pillars of the film and quite adequately hold things on their shoulders as both are thrills to watch live in the skin of their characters. Even here, though, the schizophrenic nature of the film’s tone seeps in. While Washington plays his character in a quiet, subtle manner, relying on small changes in posture and facial expression to convey his intentions, Oldman hams it up to an almost cartoonish level, flailing, limping, yelling, gasping for air, and squeezing every last bit of juice out of every second that he appears on screen. It works well to establish the characters as mirrors of one another, both having the same goal of uniting people through the teachings of the book but with different approaches and motivations; yet at times the choices made by the actors are so jarringly at odds that it feels the two men are acting in entirely different films. Never the less, both are supremely entertaining to watch and are probably the best parts of the film.
The supporting cast ranges from adequate to good. Tom Waits and Michael Gambon play small roles made more memorable than they should have been due to the concentrated bursts of personality the actor’s infuse in every line they are given. Jennifer Beals is strong in a meatier role as Oldman’s blind, abused concubine. She plays her character with a dignity and serenity that endears her to the audience and gets them appropriately cringing every time she in abused by the film’s villain. Ray Stevenson plays Oldman’s right hand man and go to thug. It’s a role that hints at development and depth early on, but ultimately doesn’t go many places by the end. I can’t decide if that hint of layer is really that apparent in the script, or if it’s simply due to Stevenson’s now perfected ability to play the tough guy with the soulful face. Either way, he does what he can with a pretty thankless role and was a good choice to be added to the cast. Mila Kunis rounds things out as Solara, daughter of the Beals character and eventual side kick to Denzel. Bright eyed, radiant of skin, and with presence glowing off the screen, Kunis is never able to sell her character as the damaged, abused survivor of lifelong servitude that she should have been; but something tells me that she wasn’t really supposed to. More likely, she was cast with the intention of lending the film both some eye candy and a relatable presence so the viewer doesn’t feel too detached to the action movie archetypes that populate the rest of the cast. In those tasks she performs well enough, but it would have been interesting to see her steered in a meatier direction by the film’s script and filmmakers. I haven’t really gotten a sense of what she is capable of as an actress as of yet.
As far as what The Book of Eli is able to accomplish overall, it’s efforts seem to be one step forward and then another back. It admirably tries to differentiate itself from the pack of apocalypse survivor films already out there by both looking at things through a religious lense and by keeping things from getting depressing with blockbuster aspiring action sequences, but ultimately ends up undermining both attempts by trying them at the same time. Things never quite work out for either the summer blockbuster or the Oscar bait art film that are duking it out for recognition within an already overloaded genre. Luckily for both the audience and the people involved in the production, strong performances from the cast and impressive visuals help keep this film somewhere in the range of mediocre and out of the depths of bad.
