Sunday, January 17, 2010

Movie Review: The Book of Eli

Today, after a great used-book store shopping trip (4 used-book stores, 1 magazine store and two restaurants) I checked out the new film The Book of Eli.

First impressions - the film was very fun, it had all the stuff I like in post-apocalyptic films (blasted landscapes, intriguing characters, and an epic tone), the fight scenes were violent but not too violent, and most importantly, it had a sense of hope. Far too often I find that post-apocalyptic films are entirely devoid of anything positive (The Day After is my personal least favourite of these kind of films - yes, we get it - Nuclear was is bad and radiation is too, now how about some story?), so the hopeful aspects of this film made me smile.

I don't want to get into too many spoilers here, but I can say that I'd like to watch it again and I enjoyed all of the main characters - Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman gave me exactly what I've come to expect from them, and I was pleasantly surprised by Mila Kunis (pictured with Washing above and who I've only seen in comedy before). I also loved seeing Rome's Ray Stevenson and The L Word's Jennifer Beals in strong supporting roles.

In the end, a good post apocalyptic film, an original screenplay (which is becoming increasing rare these days) and I loved the visuals. I recommend it without hesitation.

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