The Book of Eli

Released: 2010
Drama, Fantasy
Director: The Hughes Brothers (whoever they are)
Starring: Gary Oldman, Denzel Washington, Mila Kunis
Rated: R
Running Time: 118 minutes

The breakdown: 
In a post-apocalyptic tale, Washington plays a man who is travelling across a dangerous America with a book he must protect at all costs that could save mankind.


I love post-apocalypse or end of the world movies a lot so I had to see this one.  Overall, it's pretty good.  What's left of the population after the end of the world is dangerous and violent.  Washington, who plays Eli, is a lone wanderer travelling west across North America for the past 30 years.  He carries with him a book that he thinks can save humanity and he reads from it as much as he can.  He survives on small animals and searching abandoned houses for food or supplies.  He eventually ends up in a little village run by Gary Oldman.  He is impressed with Eli's fighting abilities and asks him to stay and join his gang.  Eli declines, and is ready to leave peacefully or by force.  Oldman pressures his blind lover to send her daughter, Kunis, to Eli to "convince" him to stay at least overnight.   Eli talks with her overnight, but does not sleep with her.  She sees he has a book and the information gets passed along to Oldman, though not on purpose.  Once Oldman finds out Eli has a book he wants it desperately.
Books are a bit of a guarded commodity in this world.  Most of them have been destroyed so a lot of people can't read because they've never seen books at all...and a lot of them have been purposefully destroyed by people in power.

The rest of the movie unfolds with some action and twists, so I won't ruin it for you, but I think you'll enjoy it.  It's thought-provoking, and well done.  You will certainly have something to talk about once it's over.

I give it 4 out of 5 for being a nice change of pace from the regular plot ideas lately.