Alright, so last night while I was heading off to sleep I though I would pop on this iTunes rental that the iTunes store recently returned to me after I so foolishly deleted it from my computer before ever watching. Had I never received this second copy for free and never watched it, I wouldn't have missed much. Even though the film clocks in under 2 hours, it still felt slow as all hell. Just to give you a bit of a premise: It's the apocalypse (doesn't matter how it happened... it happened) and this lone solider named Eli (Mmmm... Denzel) is crossing the country's barren wastelands to reach the west coast in hopes of finding a safe home for his one prized possession, his Bible. Upon route, he stops at a ruthless, savage town to get water where he causes a bit of a ruckus. Carnegie (Gary Oldman), the town's mayor (or something?), gets caught up in the dispute and learns that Eli has the Bible. Carnegie, and avid reader, must get the book so he may use its powers to enslave mankind. Eli takes off, Carnegie follows. So begins the chase. Yawn.
Knowing this, I though the movie might be this new, cool-aged western touching upon some commentary at the power of religion (Eli flights to preserves the power of faith where Carnegie looks to use religion to dupe people into following him). Na. Much of it focuses of Eli slumping around the desert knocking down any looters who gets in his path. I'll admit the fights scenes are pretty well choreographed, but is far from saving the stale tone and pacing of the whole flick. The only other redeeming quality to this whole movie was Gary Oldman. Easily one of my all-time favorite actors (right up there with Jimmy Stewart, Alec Guinness, Leo DiCaprio, and Bruce Campbell), Oldman's always exciting to see on screen. Definitely not his greatest performance - but hey - still entertaining.
Considering this flick is still new on the shelves, I assume there's the possibility some of you out there in "blog-world" may still want to watch it. For that reason, I don't want to go too much into the plot when explain the list of grievances I have, but I will end with this. The conclusion is so weak and anti-climatic it makes me proud to be an atheist.
But you've said nothing of Mila Kunis! Was she hot? Was she not? These are the reasons I would or wouldn't see this movie.
ReplyDelete