Movie Review: The Book of Eli

Movie Title: The Book of Eli
Rating: R
Director: The Hughes Brothers
Staring: Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman; Mila Kunis, Ray Stevenson and Jennifer Beals
Category: Drama, Action

Moms of Faith Rating: 5 out of 10

Intro: I normally try to avoid rated R movies. However, I also want to review movies for Moms of Faith so readers are informed…within reason.

Review: What I was most surprised about was that the main character, Eli, the main “Christian” of the film, was not portrayed a complete nut. He was a decent guy and did not quote the Word willy-nilly. He was on a “mission from God” to get the “book,” which is actually the ONLY copy of the Bible left on earth, to safety…somewhere out west.

Along his journey we see many not so nice things…

The world looks like it has been through a terrible war…and it was. 30 years of Eli walking and all the debris is still around. Man has become nuts and many have become cannibals. Thankfully, we never see anyone eating people. LOL!

However, there is a LOT of violence in this film. We will get to that in a minute.

I was disappointed by a scene in the movie where Eli allowed a woman to be raped and murdered. He could have stopped it. He kept saying “stay on the path, it’s not your concern” over and over. As if he was having an inward struggle with leaving her to a dismal fate. Sadly, he left her. :(

Later in the film, however, he realizes that even though God gave him a mission to bring the book to safety, he had not lived out what he was learning. So, we see him come to understanding. We also see him show kindness and even teach a young woman to pray before she eats.

Did these scenes make all the violence in the film any easier to swallow? NO.

On the negative side: The movie has an overabundance of violence. I would not recommend it for children at all. It is rated R for a reason. While the rape of the woman Eli left is not actually seen…and a later rape is stopped, there is still a lot of emotion, screaming, crying and fear that occurs during the scenes, that for me, was hard to watch and listen to.

There was a lot of brutality, killing and just plain unnecessary violence in the film. Too much for it to ever find a place on my shelf.

Speaking of shelf, at the end of the film, when the book’s contents are where they should be, we see it placed on a shelf between a Torah and Quran. I was not sure how I felt about that. It was like it became just another “great piece of literature.”

There was also quite a bit of swearing. A dozen or so “F” words, half a dozen “S” words, followed by some minor ones and even a “GD” or two.

Conclusion: I was saddened that this movie never mentioned Jesus. He is after all the center of the Christian faith. And I am not sure why, or what it was about the film that did not sit well with me. Not that it was all bad…It was just sort of open ended and felt like the story was incomplete….in the end I was left dry.

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