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Denzel Washington stars in the new thriller film ‘The Book of Eli’ now playing.

By Maggie Scott

Spoiler alert!  Feline lovers will not like the opening scenes of Albert and Allen Hughes’ The Book of Eli.  A cat picks its way through a decimated forest blanketed with softly falling ashes, stops at a newly fallen body, sniffs at the soon-to-be stiff flesh and before it can sink its teeth in, is turned into shish-ke-bob when an arrow from a gas-masked man pierces its scrawny body.

Later, some of its cooked flesh will feed a starving mouse.  Such is life 30 years after “the flash;” the earth-scorching sun that sent the ozone-destroyed world back into, if not the stone age, then something resembling the wild west.  It’s a dog-eat-dog world of “hijackers” and survivalists and one man (Denzel Washington) is walking west through the desolation and the rubble:

Sometimes a good Samaritan—other times, a man who can’t afford to let the misfortunes of others knock him off “the path.”  He’s armed—with faith and a mighty mean machete. These and a supply of Kentucky Fried Chicken hand wipes have gone far toward keeping him alive in a world where bartering and butchering are the names of the game. This man-with-no-name from “Before” is finally forced to take a detour from the path and seek help re-charging his ipod and locating water.

Trouble is, in this part of the world, water is a scarce commodity under the control of a madman named Carnegie (Gary Oldman).  Not content with how easily he could make people grovel at his feet for a drop of the precious liquid, Carnegie believes he can create a vast, new kingdom on earth where the people bow to his will and do his bidding by the power of the words of one book.  A book he has sent his henchmen out far and wide to find—without success.

The man walks into Carnegie’s web, which includes Solara, the daughter ( Mila Kunis) of Claudia, Carnegie’s woman (Jennifer Beals).  Solara discovers not only that the man is carrying an important book, but that he performs an unusual ritual before partaking of a meal….information of vital and violent interest to Carnegie.

While The Road delved into the importance of love in defining humanity’s worth, The Book of Eli is concerned with how religion defines it.  Just what is this book so prized by demagogues? Is it a new gospel of the apocalypse?  Is it a sequel to the book of Revelations?

Without any back story to the wandering man, the film’s final sequences are all the more surprising and intriguing, even as movie buffs will recognize the blatant borrowing from Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451.  Sparer than The Road in the decimating details of civilization’s fall, The Book is all about The Hero and his journey.  For most of that journey, he does not show much charitable forbearance to the villains of the world, and Washington gets his fisticuffs freak on with admirable results.

Zany touches, like the old couple with the amazing arsenal of weapons, provide moments of zing in a pretty pedestrian script by Gary Whitta; and the cinematography is uniformly impressive.  This Book, if not a page turner, may yet become a classic.  Rated R for violence and language.

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