The Book of Eli

This time it is Denzel Washington's turn to star in a post-apocalypse tale and although he is competent here, the film offers very little new for us. He ("Eli") treks across the USA, ostensibly aimlessly, seeking comfort where he can; avoiding the lawless gangs who would steal his clothes if they got a chance whilst he feasts on small critters and takes solace from his secret book. Eventually (it seemed) he encounters the rather ruthless "Carnegie" (a menacing but rather under-used Gary Oldman) for whom he initially takes up the cudgels before realising that what "Carnegie" really wants is the book and he will stop at nothing to get it! The production looks good, plenty of attention to detail, but the pace is really slow for the most part. It takes an age for us to accumulate enough information about the man and his book, and the set-piece fight scenes are more a testament to acrobatics than acting. Religiosity is part of the narrative, but it is too superficial and undercooked to make more than a tangential impact on what is essentially a derivate and unremarkable pilgrim's story that could have offered us so much more had that thread been better and more fully developed. The use of light and the photography in general are effective; they do present us with an eerily effective bleakness, but otherwise - it's all a bit so-so.