Science fiction and post-apocalyptical tales provide an unlimited source of inspiration for the imagination and fantasies of screen writers and film makers. Such stories transcend reality as we know it and, in most cases, they are set against the grimmest atmosphere combined with extraordinary circumstances under which their protagonists face extreme challenges that go beyond the limits of human endurance. 

The Cold War era spawned scores of films about the aftermath of global nuclear holocausts. From Stanley Kramer’s On the Beach with Gregory Peck in 1959 to Will Smith’s 2007 hit I am Legend, film goers were shown visions of a life in devastated worlds visited only in their worst nightmares. On the other hand, science fiction, particularly space stories, has inspired film makers since the birth of cinema and took audiences on journeys beyond the realms of fantasy. George Mieles started it all in 1902 with his 14 minute film A Trip to the Moon with the genre reaching its zenith in 1968 with Stanley Kubrik’s  masterpiece 2001: A  Space Oddissey. .
 

The Book of Eli takes us somewhere in the United States 30 years after a devastating cosmic cataclysm caused when global warming reached scorching levels. Eli, played by Denzel Washington in his usual splendid form, is one of the survivors of this environmental apocalypse. Armed with a bow and a quiver of arrows, a razor sharp machete, the barest survival kit and a book, Eli is on the road, heading west on foot in search of a place where a vestige of orderly, civilized life could be found. Eli is the good guy, the hero saviour and survivor in a lawless starving society. In his one man mission to save humanity from its degradation in a dystopian state, he fights hordes of armed gangs who rape, loot and murder at will .  

Eli finds some order, although very much on the wrong side of the law, when he arrives in a small town controlled by Carnegie (Gary Oldman) and his gang. Carnegie, who also controls the only water supply for miles around, is looking for a particular book that he believes would give him greater powers. The book is the Bible and Eli has it. 

Twins Albert and Allen Hughes set their film against a de-saturated landscape laid barren by the catastrophe. The greyish tone that predominates, except for the wild gunfire sequences filmed in full colour, enhance the directors` vivid expression of their vision of a disastrous environment. The Hughes brothers give more than a nod to the style of Sergio Leone’s classical Westerns. Denzel Washington’s Eli is a futuristic image the Man With No Name played by Clint Eastwood in Per un Pugno di Dollari. Both lone heroes, they single-handedly deliver towns from the grasp of gangsters like Carnegie, played here by Gary Oldman in top form.
 

The Sergio Leone influence is also evident in the spectacularly staged saloon fights and shoot outs.  One massive shoot out happens when Carnegie and his men unleash all their fire power, including bazookas, to blow to smithereens a solitary wooden house where Eli and Solari (Mile Kunis) the girl who joins him on the trek after she escapes from Carnegie’s hell hole, are given refuge by an old and very odd couple named George and Martha, two names cooked up as an ironic reference to Edward Albee’s same named main characters in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf  

The Book of Eli is not one of those run of the mill post-apocalyptic films. Denzel Washington’s charismatic screen presence coupled with a solid performance and the originality of the atmospheric vision expressed by the Hughes brothers, give this film an edge above the rest. 

With acknowledgements to KRS Film Distributors Ltd.