On paper this film has everything. Denzel Washington, a post-apocalyptic setting, and Fallout-style visuals. Unfortunately this movie has no plot, stupid characters, and incredibly boring scenes where nobody says or does anything and the actors stare at the camera like they're trying to remember their lines.
The movie starts off with Denzel shooting a cat with an arrow and killing it. He then takes shelter for the night in an abandoned house where he cooks and eats the cat. He drains the oil from the cat to use as a skin moisturizer. As he's eating the cat, he notices a mouse in the corner of the room. He gives the mouse a small bit of cat meat and wishes it well.
Before he sleeps that night, Denzel listens to an iPod and reads from his book. This is presumably the titular book of Eli. Also we learn from a nametag on Denzel's coat that his character's name is Eli. Things are starting to make sense. So what is this book? Where is Denzel going? What's his mission? Immediately the viewer is drawn into these mysteries that have been expertly presented from the setting and actions alone. There's no need for a voice-over explaining how the nukes killed everything, etc. We can infer everything by ourselves.
Next comes the random encounter. The computer spawns seven level 16 Raiders including a level 18 champion Raider wielding a +2 Chainsaw of Dismemberment. They gank Denzel at a highway overpass, demanding all his money and equipment.
Denzel rolls a 20 on initiative and critically hits Raider leader, slicing his hand off.
In a horribly cliche moment, the leader yells "GET HIM YOU IDIOTS", and Denzel proceeds to kill all 7 raiders with his machete. The raiders attack him one at a time. Denzel leaves the chainsaw raider for last because it's more dramatic that way. Then Denzel loots the dead bodies.
This is where the movie starts to turn bad. It's only about 20 minutes in, and it get much worse than this. First of all, this scene is completely ridiculous. Even before any fighting occurs, they drag out the scene by ten minutes with stupid cliche lines and inane dialogue which goes something like this:
Raider Leader: Well look what we have here boys.
Denzel: I don't want any trouble.
Raider Leader: Give me your pack of equipment and any water you have.
Denzel: No.
Raider Leader: I said give me the pack, man.
Denzel: I can't do that.
Raider Leader: Are you fucking stupid? Give me the FUCKING pack.
Denzel: No.
Raider Leader: *Looks around in astonishment* We'll kill you, man.
Denzel: I can't give you my pack.
Raider Leader: Give me the fucking pack.
Denzel: Can't do that.
Raider Leader: *Looks bewildered*
This is seriously how the scene plays out. Each party just repeats their demands over and over. Do all people in the wasteland talk like this? I understand that human contact is diminished, but I'm pretty sure all the stakes were clearly laid out on the table when this guy popped out:
Actually, now that I think about it, Denzel Washington is a master in scenes where somebody wants something from him and is going apeshit, but Denzel calmly refuses:
So the Raiders completely surround Denzel and attack him from all sides but seemingly all die because Denzel is a trained Wuju swordsman or something. This completely ruins any sense of realism or suspension of reality because you can see the perfect choreography and the queue for each raider to attack one at a time. In real life Denzel's head would be on a spike hanging on the overpass. This doesn't even happen in Fallout.
So now that we've established that Denzel is a combat mastermind, he goes to some shanty town where there appears to be some civilization.
This is where the plot takes a nosedive, mainly because you soon realize that there is no plot. Denzel goes to the local tinkerer's shop to recharge his battery on his iPod. Denzel then barters KFC clean wipes for a recharge.
This makes absolutely no sense. What is the use of a sanitary wipe in an post-apocalyptic world? You'd be clean for about 2 seconds before you're covered in radioactive ash. In fact while they're bartering the shop keeper refuses to take a lighter and oil for the battery recharge, two items that would probably come in handy considering that there's no electricity anywhere in the world. Now you may say that the wipes aren't actually meant to be used, but are simply a form of currency, as they may be rare. But this isn't true because in the begining of the movie you can see Denzel using a wipe before he goes to sleep, and there's another scene where someone buys shampoo and uses it to wash her hair.
So after recharging his iPod, Denzel goes across the street to the bar to fill his water bottle. There he is ganked by 20 men who want to kill him again.
Denzel then starts reciting lines from the Bible which sounds really badass but takes a long time and if all 20 men jumped him at that very moment while he was talking they could have actually killed him instead of all getting horribly stabbed with Denzel's machete. Oh yeah, Denzel kills them all single-handedly. Why not.
After Denzel kills everyone in the bar the bad guy who runs the town comes out and instead of shooting Denzel, the bad guy tries to hire him, because he knows Denzel has a special skill that causes enemies to attack him one at a time. The bad guy, who's name is Carnagie, explains that he wants Denzel to kill his enemies so that Carnagie can create an empire of little towns under his control. Also, Carnagie is searching for a VERY IMPORTANT BOOK that he is devoting all his resources towards finding. Geez, I wonder which book it is. Carnagie gives Denzel a room and food for the night to persuade him to join the cause. Also a whore named Solara:
Of course Denzel refuses to sleep with Solara, and instead reads to her the Bible. That's right, the book Denzel has been carrying around all this time is the King James Bible. This is also the book that Carnagie is going apeshit over trying to find. Now before this point, you are thinking, "yeah, there's really no plot here, we don't know who Denzel is, what he's trying to do, why he has the book, or what the book is for, but I bet it's really great." This is the point where all expectations just disappear, because you realize that,
WHOOPS, YOU'RE WATCHING CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALIST PROPAGANDA
Denzel vaguely explains to Solara that all Bibles were burned either before or after the war that killed everything. Bible-thumpers rejoice. The salvation of humanity resides in the last Bible on Earth. This is where the movie just unravels into a heaping pile of horse shit.
This is further emphasized in the next scene by Carnagie explaining to his second in command why he wants the Bible. He wants it so that he can instill a sense of purpose into his citizens, so that civilization is not just mindless living in bombed out buildings and eating rat meat and cannibalism.
Then Denzel and Solara start praying, because now the screenwriters just don't give a shit anymore and decided that if the movie is going to be about Christianity, they may as well blatantly shove it down our faces.
Now if you thought there was no plot before because they didn't explain it, here's where you realize there's no plot because the writers couldn't think of one. Denzel explains to Solara after their prayer session that he was in a bomb shelter when the nuclear war started and after he came out he wandered around until a voice in his head told him to get a book. Under the guidance of a mysterious voice, he found the Bible under a pile of rubble and then the voice told him to "go west". That's it. That's what Denzel has been doing for the last 30 years, trying to transport the Bible west for some reason, to someone.
That's not a plot, that's just a series of vague ideas that the writers came up with after they had filmed all the scenes where Denzel kills everyone with his bare hands. Then they tried to slap on some Christianity philosophy in there to create some deeper meaning but instead ended up being gigantic douche bags.
This is also where the writers decide to take part of the plot of The Transporter and have Solara join Denzel in his quests for no other reason than the Hollywood rule that you must have a hot chick accompany the main character, even if she is worthless to everyone.
Actually, Solara isn't worthless, she hurts Denzel's cause by revealing to Carnagie that Denzel has the Bible. So Caranagie goes into WTF cliche mode and orders his men to "FIND THE BOOK AT ALL COSTS". Denzel and Solara escape the town together and the rest of the movie is them running away from Carnagie's men. Oh yeah, during the escape, Denzel kills about 50 men with his knife and also shoots a bunch of people in the head with his pistol, beyond the pistol's maximum accurate range. Also he never needs to reload. I guess God did it.
Let me reiterate again that Solara is completely fucking worthless. She has no idea why she is following Denzel on his quest, other than that her mother "thinks she will be safer with him". That's why the very next scene is where Solara gets HORRIBLY RAPED BY RAIDERS.
Carnagie and his men finally catch up to Denzel and corner him and Solara in a house. Carnagie brings out a giant machine gun and shreds the house until nothing is left except Denzel and Solara, who inexpicably survive the bombardment despite the wooden walls of the house providing no protection at all against machine gun slugs.
Carnagie threatens to shoot Denzel unless Denzel tells him where the book is hidden at, because for some reason Carnagie thinks Denzel has hidden it. just as Carnagie is about to pull the trigger, he says "Dammit you are the only one who knows where the book is, I can't kill you." This is despite the fact that Carnagie sprayed the entire house with machine gun bullets haphazardly, and could have killed Denzel at any time. Then Carnagie says he is going to kill Solara unless he gets the book. This is the first time this situation has ever happened in movie history.Denzel breaks down and says the book is hidden in the TV in the house, which it is. Carnagie gets the book and shoots Denzel in the abdomen anyway then drives off with Solara. Solara kills the driver in the car despite her weighing only 80 pounds and having no arm strength whatsoever. She then drives back to the house where she DOESN'T find Denzel laying there bleeding to death from a terrible abdomen gunshot. Somehow Denzel is fine and is walking westward on the highway. She picks him up in the car and they drive west, not knowing where they are going or why.
The scene then switches to Carnagie who is obviously excited about finally obtaining the book so that he can preach to his citizens so that they may follow him. He opens the book and realizes that it's in braille.
This has also never happened in movie history before, where the bad guy finally gets what he is searching for, but turns out to not be what he expected. Incidentally, Carnagie has a blind wife and he asks her to translate the book. She says "no" because she hates him, and the scene ends. I did not make any of that up. Unfortunately that is exactly how it happened in the movie.
The stupidity isn't over yet. Despite not knowing where to go, Denzel and Solara drive all the way to San Francisco and row a boat over to Alcatraz for no reason at all. There they find some old guy with bad hair that explains that the island is a giant library with a printing press and that their mission is to preserve the knowledge of humanity. How this place exists or how they got the equipment, books, printing press, or personnel is never explained.
But wait, Denzel lost the book to Carnagie. How is he going to give this old guy the bible? This is the final nail in the coffin. For no reason at all, Denzel starts reciting the bible line by line FROM MEMORY. The last scene is the old guy who still has no name putting the King James Bible on a shelf in one of the libraries on the island. How the book will save humanity is never explained.
So 1 hour and 40 minutes later the message is clear: the Bible is the most important thing in the world. Thanks for church.
