To hell and back with the Book of Eli

Bible basher: Denzel Washington fights his way through a post-apocalyptic wasteland carrying a King James version close to his chest
10 April 2012

The world has been devastated by yet another apocalypse, leaving the familiar car wrecks, burnt-out buildings and marauding robbers scratching around for food and water.

But don’t worry. Denzel Washington is about, and he’s more than a match for anyone.

Here, his screen name is Eli and he’s been walking westwards for 30 years, carrying a King James Bible close to his chest, which will save us all — if a psychopathic mob leader played by Gary Oldman doesn’t get at it first.

Allen and Albert Hughes, whose Menace 2 Society proclaimed their talent but who haven’t made a movie for nearly a decade, take Gary Whitta’s moral tale to heart and invest it with as much bleached-out visual splendour as they can.

In Washington they have a star who would look dignified in a Carry On film, and in Oldman an effective Mr Evil.

But though they provide us with a fair number of fight scenes, explosions and suchlike, the Hughes brothers clearly think they are also Saying Something Important.

The result is like The Road rewritten by Sarah Palin for the greater good of Alaska and mankind.

There’s a wonderful scene near the end when Washington arrives, with the girl he has rescued from Oldman (Mila Kunis), at his destination in some wrecked city which could be New York. There, none other than a whiskery Malcolm McDowell is trying to forge a new civilisation from the bad old one.

By this time Washington has lost his bible — but asks McDowell to take hold of pen and paper and calmly recites the whole thing to him word for word.

There you are, you see. We’re saved. Thank God for Denzel Washington. Only he could have done it.

The Book Of Eli
Cert: 15

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