Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
I've poured over all of the possible synonyms for the first word that popped into my brain to describe the long-overdue new movie from The Hughes Brothers (FROM HELL, DEAD PRESIDENTS, MEANCE II SOCIETY, AMERICAN PIMP), but nothing quite does it justice. So I'll just say it: THE BOOK OF ELI is a cool movie. It's not a great movie; it's far from a masterpiece. But it is unabashedly cool, and I don't use that word often. But when you combine one of the coolest American actors of his generation and pit him against one of the coolest British actors ever and then throw in Tom Waits in a supporting part, well, that math lands you squarely at Cool.
The weirdest thing of all is that the more religion this movie injected into its original story by screenwriter Gary Whitta, the more I dug it. The filmmakers have crafted a desolate, desperate, stark world to wage this new kind of Holy War. I got completely caught up witnessing Denzel Washington's stoic brand of heroism and Gary Oldman's spitfire take on Carnegie, the one-eyed king in a morally blind society that exists after either God or man ripped a hole in the sky decades earlier and torched most of the earth, leaving only a few survivors. The gift of reading has pretty much disappeared, and only a few of the oldest inhabitants of our planet still know how to read a book. Eli (Washington) is a crusader, a man walking east to west to deliver a book because a voice told him it was the right thing to do years earlier. Any hints of civilization have turned into ugly, slightly radioactive Wild West towns, with trading posts (wet naps apparently fetch a high price), bars, whores, and the occasional gunfight. Oldman runs one particular such community, and he's desperately searching for a particular book that he believes will finally bring some order to his way of life.
Eli is also a fighter extraordinaire, and more than once we see him take out a dozen aggressors in seconds. And the blood doth flow. It turns out that Eli possesses the very book Carnegie has been searching for--a bible. Carnegie fully believes in the power of religion to tame the savagery of his corner of the world, and no scenery goes gleefully unchewed as he sets out to prove that. And I'll admit, as much as he overplays the part, it's fun to watch Oldman cut loose like he used to in films like SID & NANCY, STATE OF GRACE, DRACULA, TRUE ROMANCE, LEON THE PROFESSIONAL, OR THE FIFTH ELEMENT. This is classic, out-of-his-cage Oldman, and I've missed him.
Not to take anything away from Washington, who gives us a portrait of this sensitive assassin doing what he believes to be God's work by taking the book to the West. Along the way, he meets up with Mila Kunis' Solara, who Oldman gives Eli as a gift on his first night in town, but he ends up taking her on as an apprentice of sorts. Her mother, Claudia (Jennifer Beals, still beautiful), is Carnegie's ill-treated lady, who wants nothing more than her daughter to get as far away from their living conditions as possible. Carnegie's muscle is Redridge, played by Ray Stevenson (from PUNISHER: WAR ZONE and "Rome"), who brings a touch of unexpected nobility to his role. And the aforementioned Mr. Waits is a trader with a fabulous mane of hair and a detailed outlook on the way things work 'round these parts. The weirdness continues deep into the film when Eli and Solara run into an elderly couple (named George and Martha, Michael Gambon and Frances de la Tour) living in and protecting their solitary home.
But it was the religious aspect of THE BOOK OF ELI that intrigued me the most. Carnegie is the smartest person in this movie; Eli is the most driven. Hell, if Carnegie wasn't so blatantly evil, we might actually be rooting for him to help stop all of the terrible things that are happening every day in this place. His reasoning is sound, even if his methods are despicable. Eli's dark and mysterious demeanor wore on me after a while, especially when you find out that his story and secrets aren't so shocking. Still, the Hughes Brothers have created something awesome, from the almost black-and-white look of the movie to the clear tributes to the MAD MAX movies, A BOY AND HIS DOG, and several other post-apocalyptic works. But they make it all the more fascinating by turning an experiment in working religion into a geek-friendly environment, in a largely respectful way. Even at its most outrageous, THE BOOK OF ELI still held my interest and made me increasingly curious where this fairly simple story would take us. And I never could have predicted where this tale ends up. January releases continue to impress me, and this maybe most of all.
-- Capone
therealcapone@aintitcoolmail.com
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