***1/2 - The basic message of this movie seems to be that ‘the Bible will save humanity’. Now, that right there puts this film at odds with my extreme anti-religion viewpoint, and digs itself a hole that it has to try to claw its way out of in 118 minutes. So the fact that I rated “The Book of Eli” as a three and a half star movie indicates that film itself – overtly religious connotations notwithstanding – was excellent and highly enjoyable. It was surprisingly well directed by the Hughes Brothers, and used an interesting lighting/coloring technique that made the post-apocalyptic landscape very believable. Denzel Washington was his always reliable stoic and somewhat watchable self and main antagonist Gary Oldman portrays the guy he portrays in every movie he’s in: an evil super villain who looks like he is always just about to snap and club one of his henchmen to death with a paperweight. Other than the whole religion issue, there are really only two problems I had with this movie: 1) the surprise reveal at the end – I’m trying to keep spoilers to a minimum here - is only surprising because of the complete impossibility of the characteristics portrayed, and 2) the passing of the ‘post-apocalyptic badass wanderer’ torch to someone who received no combat training whatsoever and spent most of the movie getting beat up or cowering behind buildings was fairly unbelievable.
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