Reviewing “The Book of Eli”

Title: The Book of Eli
Rating: R
Moral Rating: Moderate
Nudity: Low/mild
Profanity: Excessive
Violence: Excessive

The earth has changed; it’s been burned by the sun along with most of its former inhabitants, leaving a scorched landscape and destitute survivors. It is the end of everything as we know it…or is it? Eli realizes the power that is bound between the covers of a book he believes he’s been given a divine commission to protect: the last Bible on earth. He also believes he’s been instructed to ensure its safe arrival to a place that will appreciate its survival- a place where he has never been. He must learn to literally “walk by faith, and not by sight.” However, he’s not the only one who realizes that this book holds far more power than any other book on earth. Carnegie, who only has his own rise to power in mind, is on a mission to find the very book that Eli so carefully protects. He won’t stop until he finds it. So begins a conflict that costs many lives – so many lives for one Book. Is it worth it?

That is one of the aspects of this movie that should provoke thought. What if you had the last Bible on earth, and you thought God was leading you to take it somewhere so that it could be preserved for posterity? Would you be willing to kill dozens of people so that the rest of history would be able to know truth and salvation? But what about the words within the Bible that say clearly, “Thou shalt not kill?” What about those? Would you be able to trust that God would preserve His Word without you having to kill? Of course, many times in the Bible (mainly Old Testament), God’s plans involved taking lives in battle…but what about now? Those are some questions you will have to wrestle with yourself and those are some questions that even Eli was forced to wrestle with towards the end of the film:

“I got so caught up in keeping it safe, that I forgot to live by what it said.” ~ Eli

Eli’s thoughts are always on his mission, and the Bible, and he incorporates it into his daily life:

“Do you really read the same book every day?” – Solara
“Without fail.” – Eli

I found that fact to be an amazing find in such a film. It wasn’t presented in an overly cheesy way and I felt like it could actually cause people to think about God, the Bible, the power of prayer and scripture – not to mention that parts of the Bible were actually read and quoted throughout the movie, including all of Psalm 23.

I also appreciated Eli’s steadfastness in the movie; several times when he could have stooped low, he stood firm, and he did it such a way that even the “bad” characters noticed:

“He’s different from the others; you won’t be able to make him do what you want him to.”

At one point Eli prays before a meal, with Solara. She is confused, never having been exposed to prayer or this God, Eli prays to before. But she seems to gravitate towards what she sees that’s different in him and later she prays with her mother before a meal, which is a very innocent and sweet time.
There are also a few points in the movie where Eli waxes philosophical. Once, he tells Solara about what the world was like before it burned, saying,

“People had more than what they needed…and they didn’t know what they had.”

He continues, all too accurately describing the selfishness of Americans today. At another point in time, he talks to Solara about trust, which becomes an even more meaningful conversation after the final minutes of the movie have passed. I can’t tell you why, because that would give away an important (and my favorite) part of the movie, but towards the end, I was utterly convicted about a certain area of my spiritual disciplines that God has been reminding me about lately anyway. The end of the movie broke me and I would watch it over just to get to that point again.

Violence:
• The first scene in the movie gives us a view into a bleak, dark forest, where a man lies dead – a gun just inches from his lifeless hand. A cat approaches the body, sniffing it, before being shot with an arrow for Eli’s dinner.
• A skeleton is seen in a broken-down car in the middle of a desert.
• Eli discovers a dead man hanging in the closet of an otherwise deserted house.
• There are several fight scenes with Eli warding off half-a-dozen or more threatening men, often all by himself. This includes fights with fists, bow-and arrows,  swords, hand-guns, and semi-automatics. Of course they all have gruesome parts, including a guy’s hand getting cut off and spurting blood, another guy’s nose and mouth bleeding, etc. None of the “bad-guys” are left alive in these battles -there’s often a wide-view showing the carnage after the fight.
• Several references are made to cannibals/cannibalism, which seems to be what many people have resorted to in this post-apocalyptic world. Eli and Solara not only find themselves in a house with an elderly couple who are cannibals, but they are offered some “meat” at this house, which is suggested to be human.
• Men on motorcycles drive by and shoot a man in the head, stopping to “rough-up” the woman who was traveling with him.
• Carnegie is rough with his wife.
• Solara is very roughly beaten up by several road-side villains and it’s hard to watch men treating a young lady like that.
• The cannibalistic older couple are violently killed and their house riddled through with holes from a monstrous gun.
• Carnegie holds a gun to Solara’s head to get Eli to tell him where to find what he wants.
• Eli is shot in the gut and later tapes himself up with duct tape.
• Solara chokes a man who’s holding her captive in an SUV with a rope.
• One of Carnegie’s accomplices gets stabbed by his own knife and is seen pulling it out of his chest before dying.

Language:
• Sadly, this film overused crude language (not that it’s really possible to use swearing at all without “overusing” it). Happily, the main character never swore. That always ruins it for me – especially if you are supposed to like/respect them. However, that doesn’t take away the fact that several other characters, especially the villain, Carnegie, just seem to spout it like their second-nature. The “F” word, was the most prominent word used – my count numbering over 10. Also used “S–t”(about 3 times), “Hell” (misused), “B—h,” “b–tard,” and “d–n.”

Immorality:
• Several ladies wear dresses with rather low tops, which are sometimes in tatters.
• There were a couple of too-obvious glimpses of women’s breasts under too-low/too-tight of necklines.
• Carnegie forces Solara to go in to Eli’s room, acting as a prostitute, with the intent of convincing him to stick around for his own selfish purposes. But Eli refuses to take advantage of her, though he lets her stay in his room for the night, on the floor, so that Carnegie doesn’t beat her.
• Several times it appears that some of the villains are about to take advantage of the women sexually, though nothing is ever seen to fruition. Once a man stands in Solara’s way, and she has to ask him forcefully to move several times, and when he does, it appears that he leers after her.
• Carnegie “rewards” several of his henchmen by telling them to go out and get some “p—y” (crude reference female anatomy).

Summary:
Sadly, I cannot wholeheartedly recommend this movie because of the language and somewhat excessive violence. However, for mature viewers who would not be disturbed by such things, it really is almost worth seeing for the price of a ticket. But you must use wisdom. Ideally, this movie would be best viewed with Clear-Play, after it is released on DVD (if you are lucky enough to own one, or to know someone who does). This was a film with an awesome core message, sadly doused in too much violence and language – possibly to make it more “palatable” to today’s worldly audience, who would otherwise probably have been bored or not interested. Did those aspects of the movie take away from the message it carried? I thought so. I like a movie that makes me think. Check mark that. I like a movie that helps me to grow in my love for God, or appreciation for what He’s created. Check mark that. I like a movie that I can recommend to friends and family. Hmmm… not this one. It frustrates me immensely when people are on the verge of something so, so good, but they butcher it with crowd-pleasing stupidity. Maybe Hollywood needs to grow up a little, along with the people of America, and realize that there are more mature ways to handle situations than with a sword or gun or fist. – That there are more intelligent ways to say something than cursing up a storm. Maybe, they’d discover that movies without those things really can be just as amazing – if not more so – than the cliche cultural status-quo.

Written by: Tai Sophia. For more articles and thoughts from Tai check out her blog beggarlybouquet.com