Warner Bros. | 2010 | 118 min. | Rated R
As is usually the case with movie apocalypses, the one in The Book of Eli leaves the United States covered in a thick coating of grime, dust and dirt. However, we have little information about what caused the whole thing. What we do know is that it happened thirty years ago, and survivors refer to the event as “the flash.” One of the few human survivors, and indeed the only human we see for the first 10 minutes of the movie, is played by Denzel Washington. Though his name is Eli, people he encounters refer to him as ‘walker’ because he prefers traveling on foot across the country to settling down in one of the towns.
Highly trained, and heavily scarred Eli makes his way across the barren dessert. He is dressed in tattered clothes and well worn shoes. What passes as a landscape consists of bomb-blasted freeways dead end in piles of rubble and exposed girders. A dying car battery powers the last iPod on Earth, the final notes of music in a world devoid of color. His world is but a shadow of its former self; incessant violence, hate, rape, murder, theft, confusion, anger, and despair reign. Trust, faith, God and friendship are all distant memories.
In his bag, Eli carries a shotgun, long-blade and the only book that matters. His mission is to deliver a message of peace to the world, though where he’s headed and to whom he’s to give his precious gift remains a mystery even to him. He follows his instincts and trusts that he’ll be led to whomever he needs to see and to wherever he needs to go. He stops in what looks like a settlement out of the Old West. Here, people trade what they have for what they need. The whole thing is run by a corrupt man named Carnegie (Gary Oldman) who is in search of a book that he believes will grant him ultimate power over those throughout the country. When Eli refuses to help Carnegie, he finds himself on the run from a band of ruthless thugs and accompanied by a young woman named Solara (Mila Kunis) who hopes to find piece with Eli, and in the book he’s carrying.
Directors the Hughes Brothers (Menace II Society), return to the big screen with one man’s journey of faith, carrying the bible across the country until divine intervention or chance brings him to his destination. That said, Washington’s character is still a badass who can take down the numerous bad guys who get in his way. Gary Oldman delivers a well balanced performance that gives credence to the slippery corruptness of his character.
There’s no denying that The Book of Eli is a film with a central message about religion. One gets the sense from various references scattered throughout the movie that the filmmakers hope that viewers of any belief system might be able to make the mental switch from the Bible, to the Torah, etc. The idea being, Eli isn’t carrying the Bible so much as he’s carrying a representation of faith itself. But the fact that the set-up demands that the story choose one particular book will no doubt make the film feel very Christian to many viewers. In fact, while both Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman give fine performances, it is the message of faith and redemption that outshines them both.
The film is framed at 2.40:1 and presented in 1080p with the VC-1 codec. The image is blemish-free and exhibits excellent detail in motes of dust, stretches of dirt skin and hair. Overall sharpness is consistently impressive, with no moments of haziness or softness, though slight edge halos are visible in some of the more high contrast scenes where figures are silhouetted against the sky. With a stylized – mainly desaturated – color palette, black levels and shadow detail become more central to the presentation, and are quite good. However in the first ten minutes of the film there are some noticeable posterizing / noise problems in the deepest expanses of black. Whether this is a byproduct of the color manipulation or the transfer is unclear (I suspect the former), but it did not show up again after the scene in the abandoned house. Contrast has also been manipulated to impart starkness to the visuals, though there are few moments when things look excessively compressed, generally retaining detail in both whites and blacks.
The lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 is excellent, displaying a strong dynamic impact, a wide front-channel stereo spread, and fabulous surround activity. The rear/side channels begin by offering up some pleasant ambient bloom on the musical track and continue through various sonic effects: wind, gunshots, explosions, and all sorts of loud noises.
The disc includes English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; French and Spanish subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.
The bulk of the supplements are wrapped in the Maximum Movie Mode feature, though a fair amount of the material is also accessible independently (though not entirely by design). As usual, the DVD and Digital Copy are great additions .
Maximum Movie Mode: Exclusive to the Blu-ray release, this amplified variation on the video commentary includes picture-in-picture comparisons of storyboard panels to the film, cast and crew interviews, branching to Focus Points (which can also be accessed separately) and a 3D pre-visualization of the final action sequence. Though not densely populated with material, it does offer a satisfactory and well-rounded look behind the scenes, though it would have been nice if the storyboards and concept art were available in a separate gallery.
Focus Points (34:24, HD)
Featurettes highlight various aspects of the production.
• The Look of Eli (5:00) – Illustrations used to establish the look and tone of the film.
• Underpass Fight (3:11) – Deconstructing the first fight scene’s training and technical components.
• Building Carnegie’s Town (3:16) – Set design of the ramshackle town.
• The Motorcycle Brigade (2:59) – A closer look at the two-wheeled vehicles used by Carnegie’s henchmen.
• Eli Goes to Battle (3:29) – Deconstructing the bar fight scene’s training and technical components.
• Eli’s Mission (4:01) – Character analysis and motivation.
• Shootout at George and Martha’s (3:53) – Technical and logistical aspects of the ballistic action sequence.
• Eli’s Weapon of Choice (2:15) – A closer look at the character’s machete-sword hybrid.
• Solara Causes Mayhem (6:25) – The technical components of shooting Solara’s action scene.
• Apocalyptic San Francisco (3:28) – Designing and dressing the devastated San Francisco environment.
A Lost Tale: Billy (5:02, HD): The Hughes Brothers, working with illustrator Tommy Lee Edwards, present a story from Carnegie’s childhood.
Behind the Story: Includes two longer documentaries titled “Starting Over” (13:03, HD) and “Eli’s Journey” (17:54, HD). The former looks at how humanity tends to cope during times of crisis and what sociologists believe would have to happen to rebuild civilization. The latter is an overview of the film from story development to production. Much of the interview material was used in the Maximum Movie Mode feature, providing an alternative way of viewing the information that would otherwise be locked up in that feature.
Deleted / Alternate Scenes (1:53, HD): Three scenes provide a slightly different perspective on events.
The Book of Eli Soundtrack (4:59, HD): Co-Director Allen Hughes and Composer Atticus Ross talk about the film score in a press junket style interview environment.
BD-Live
DVD: For playback when there’s not a Blu-ray player around. Includes the feature only.
Digital Copy: Incorporated into the DVD “Combo Disc” and compatible with Mac and Windows. Offer expires June 13, 2011.
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