Silver Pictures Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures
Columbia Pictures Release date(s) January 15, 2010 (2010-01-15) Running time 118 minutes Country United States Language English Budget $80 million Gross revenue $38,020,000
Thirty years after an apocalyptic event, Eli (Denzel Washington) is on a journey to the west coast of the United States. On his travels he runs into many enemies, but he ably dispatches them with his fighting skills.
Searching for a source of water he arrives in a ramshackle town which is overseen by Carnegie (Gary Oldman). Carnegie is a literate man and he has gangs looking for a book, though the gangs and his own henchmen do not understand why he wants the book.
After shooing away a cat in Carnegie’s bar, Eli is set upon by a gang of bikers; Eli kills them all. Realizing that Eli is a literate man like himself Carnegie asks Eli to stay, though it is made clear that the offer is not negotiable. After Carnegie’s blind wife Claudia (Jennifer Beals) gives Eli some food Carnegie asks Claudia’s daughter Solara (Mila Kunis) to seduce Eli. Eli turns her down but before they eat he says a prayer.
The following day Solara prays with her mother and Carnegie realizes that Eli has a copy of the Bible, the book he has been looking for, as all copies were destroyed after the apocalypse. Eli sneaks out of his room and goes to the stores across the street where he asked the Engineer (Tom Waits) to recharge his portable battery.
Carnegie attempts to stop Eli, having all his henchmen fire at him, but Eli appears to be invulnerable to bullets and he shoots most of Carnegie’s henchmen, and a ricochet shot grazes Carnegie’s leg. After Eli leaves, Solara follows and tracks him down; she takes him to the town’s water supply and Eli traps her there and continues on.
Solara escapes and finds herself set upon by two men, whom Eli kills and they continue on until they arrive at a house. The residents Martha (Frances de la Tour) and George (Michael Gambon) have fortified their house and Solara and Eli fall through a trap door, but George and Martha invite them in for tea. Eli surmises that they trap and kill guests but before Eli and Solara can leave they are found by Carnegie.
After a shoot-out which kills some of Carnegie’s men, George and Martha are killed, and Eli and Solara are captured. Carnegie threatens to kill Solara and Eli hands the Bible over to Carnegie. Carnegie shoots him in the stomach and leaves. While in transit Solara escapes and drives back to help Eli, Carnegie returns to the town as he has the Bible and is low on fuel.
Solara picks Eli up and they continue west until they reach the Golden Gate Bridge, then they row over to Alcatraz where they find a group of survivors dedicated to preserving pre-war knowledge. Eli tells the guard that he has a copy of the King James version of the Bible and they are allowed in. Inside they are introduced to Lombardi (Malcolm McDowell), who is the curator of a collection of things from before the apocalypse. Eli, who is possibly blind (a heavily debated plot point), dictates the Bible from memory to Lombardi, then dies from his wounds. Carnegie has the Engineer open the Bible but is distraught to find that it is in Braille, and his wife refuses to read it to him. His leg has started to go septic and he will die without ever having read the Bible.
Alcatraz prints copies of the Bible, Solara takes Eli’s weapons and heads back east to the town.
Production
In May 2007, Columbia Pictures and Warner Brothers. signed the Hughes Brothers to direct The Book of Eli, based on a script by Gary Whitta. The film is the brothers’ first since From Hell in 2001.The script was subsequently rewritten by Anthony Peckham, and in September 2008, actor Denzel Washington was cast in the lead role.The following October, Gary Oldman was cast to star alongside Washington.Filming began in February of 2009, in New Mexico.Alcon Entertainment financed the film and co-produced with Silver Pictures.
Critical reception
The film has received mixed reviews from critics. As of January 18, the film holds a 45% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 126 reviews with an average score of 5.4/10.Another review aggretator, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating from 0-100 top reviews from mainstream critics, gave the film an average rating of 52% based on 29 reviews.
Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert said of the film: “You won’t be sorry you went. It grips your attention, and then at the end throws in several WTF! moments, which are a bonus.”Reviewing the film for The A.V. Club, Scott Tobias graded the film a B, and wrote “At a time when theaters are experiencing a glut of doomsday scenarios, the Hughes’ ashen, bombed-out future world looks a little too familiar, no matter how crisply they present it. But the showdown between Washington and a deliciously hammy Oldman complicates the film’s overt religiosity…”.Todd McCarthy of Variety predicted “this will not be one of … Denzel Washington’s bigger grossers.” Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a D, calling it “a ponderous dystopian bummer that might be described as The Road Warrior without car chases, or The Road without humanity.”
Directed by Albert Hughes
Allen Hughes Allen Hughes
Produced by Joel Silver
Susan Downey
Andrew Kosove
Broderick Johnson
Denzel Washington
Written by Gary Whitta
Starring Denzel Washington
Gary Oldman Gary Oldman
Mila Kunis Mila Kunis
Ray Stevenson Ray Stevenson
Jennifer Beals Jennifer Beals
Frances de la Tour Frances de la Tour
Michael Gambon Michael Gambon
Tom Waits Tom Waits
Music by Atticus Ross
Cinematography Don Burgess
Editing by Cindy Mollo
Studio Alcon Entertainment
Silver Pictures
Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Release date(s) January 15, 2010 (2010-01-15)
Running time 118 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $80 million
Gross revenue $38,020,000
