The Book Of Eli (15) ***
Don't bother living for tomorrow, live for now, because the latter half of this century and beyond is devoid of hope.
Mankind will be undone by intolerance and arrogance with disastrous consequences.
Children Of Men, Doomsday, I Am Legend, The Road, Terminator: Salvation and even the Pixar animation WALL-E all promoted a dystopian future, in which the last vestiges of humanity feed off the weak and vulnerable, sometimes literally.
Scripted by comic book author Gary Whitta, The Book Of Eli continues the journey towards earthbound purgatory, set in the aftermath of a great war which has reduced the planet to a lawless, unforgiving wasteland.
Cinematographer Don Burgess bleaches the screen of colour, providing directors Allen and Albert Hughes (Menace II Society, From Hell) with a stark backdrop for their story of an enigmatic loner on a mythical quest.
They open in a forest, where messenger Eli (Denzel Washington) hunts down a hairless cat for food then continues on his personal odyssey to deliver a sacred book to survivors in the west.
He has guarded the precious tome for 30 years, knowing that its pages contain the secret to civilisation's rebirth.
One man, despot Carnegie (Gary Oldman), knows about the book and when Eli strides into town, he enlists right-hand man Redridge (Ray Stevenson) and his henchmen to take the prize by force.
When violence fails, the tyrant forces adopted daughter Solara (Mila Kunis) to ply her feminine wiles on Eli to save her blind mother Claudia (Jennifer Beals) from a beating.
The Book Of Eli is an involving trek through a world irrevocably scarred by catastrophic destruction: broken highways littered with the shells of abandoned vehicles, makeshift towns full of thieves and murderers, seared earth as far as the eye can see.
The Hughes brothers enliven the sporadic action set pieces with directorial brio, including an outrageously overblown final stand involving old-timers George (Michael Gambon) and Martha (Frances de la Tour) and disco anthem Ring My Bell.
Washington embodies his noble warrior with typical gravitas but the character's emotional arc is limited.
Oldman chews hungrily on the scenery with wide-eyed glee as only he can.
Meanwhile, Kunis takes a leaf of Sigourney Weaver's book in the Alien series: when the going gets tough, the tough shoot or blow everything up.
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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