The Book of Eli

The Book of Eli acts as an exploitative companion piece to the recently released and excessively restrained The Road, which also took place in a post-apocalyptic world scarred by unnamed disasters. Denzel Washington plays a lone walker carrying the world’s last remaining Bible toward an unknown destination, but when he stops in a rare swath of “civilization” to repair his iPod, the book becomes the target of town boss Carnegie. Gary Oldman recycles his Southern plutocrat/supervillain schtick from The Fifth Element as Carnegie (who’s abandoned more pretense of being a legitimate film actor over the last 15 years, Oldman or Liam Neeson?), and the usually appealing Mila Kunis is just dour, sepia-toned eye candy. The Book of Eli is both enlivened and undermined by directors Allen and Albert Hughes’ (From Hell, Dead Presidents) obsession with flippant and highly stylized violence.