Book of Eli

My brother and I went to Book of Eli on Saturday. This movie was the visual opposite of Avatar. Set in a post-apocalyptic world thirty years after the 'flash' where everything is bland, used, dirty and grey (where everything in Avatar was bright and colorful) we follow Eli on the last leg of his journey to deliver a book. The story was fantastic. Denzel was great and Gary Oldman was, as usual, a fantastic villain. There were some great humorous moments (like some of the characters having no idea what a TV was). And the ending had such a great payoff.

The camera work during action was interesting. It seemed like it was either one static shot showing the whole fight without any cuts and sometimes entirely in silhouette. Or, like in one particularly fantastic gun fight, the camera man was running around between the crossfire focusing in on certain characters in the fight and then impossibly moving through set walls to cover the other characters. It was so amazing that I found it humorous in its impossibility, and yet they retained the live feel of a guy with a camera on his shoulder trying to cover the chaos of the battle.

There was a lot of swearing and a truck load of violence. But no sex. There was sexy, however. Mila Kunis was wonderful in her role. I had not seen her in anything other than the 70's show and was quite impressed with her performance.

The spiritual side of the film was great, too. There is a feeling that a subtle supernatural influence is going on through the film. The ending comes about in such a way that all the events of the come together in the end. Quite difficult to really emphasize just what without spoilers, so just know that this movie's ending is worth every moment building up to it, in my opinion.

I also liked the lack of love for cats in the film.