THE BOOK OF ELI Film Review - 2/2/10

The world has burned and been devastated in a war and there isn't much left. This film's main theme is Christianity if you can handle that part (which is pretty integral to the plot) then wandering through a bleached and blasted wasteland covered in wreckage and ruins with every other person you meet a killer or a thief may make you wonder where your headed? The is no colour in the film it's as burnt and blistered as the landscape that Denzil Washington's character of Eli is travelling through - All greys and bluish blacks and deeply unsettling. What a person now throws away for nothing a character in this story would kill for - A KFC Cleaning Wrap, a box of matches or whatever? Struggling along the road for 30 years with a book in his possession Eli comes across Carnegie (A very restrained performance from Gary Oldman) and his henchman Redridge (Ray Stevenson from "Rome") who decide they want that precise book. Violence ensues as Eli continues his journey West closely trailed by Mila Kunis as Solara (Family Guy's Meg Griffin) and trailed by Carnegie and his bad-guys. In a bid to shake the pursuers we get a nice set piece with Frances de la Tour & Michael Gambon as they hole up in a house in the middle of a dusty plain. It's here that you then start to realise that things are not quite right? Events take a turn and to say any more would spoil it - But it's a film you come out of thinking now I understand why he did that - that was the reason he reacted as he did - that now makes sense why that happened - I can see the point of how that was and things spin around on a different axis as realisation dawns. It won't be a film for everyone but it certainly leaves you thinking afterwards on the way things are or could be?

POPCORN RATING: