What Took Me So Long: I heard that is was an apocalyptic movie about people fighting over a bible. That kind of curtailed my excitement.
Why I Saw It: (Club 50) Oh Denzel. No one else quite does what you do. You are one of the only men who can honest to god open a movie by name alone, and there's such a simple pleasure in your performance. This movie has no business working, yet it does. It certainly has talent, with Denzel, Gary Oldman, and Mila Kunis leading it. And was that Tom Waits? The action is more impressively staged than I'd expect for what was a winter release. It isn't all that concerned about explaining how Washington can easily kill a group of a dozen attackers with ease or Kunis times a grenade perfectly to explode under and oncoming car. It's not over the top. It's confident.
Why I Wish I Hadn't: The religious allegory (can I even call it an allegory when it's so explicit?) is a little on the nose. Also, it's sort of hard to believe there would really be so few bibles left. They can find a Da Vinci Code but not a bible? It's only the most reproduced book in human history, that's all. Also, I'm assuming that I'm not meant to think about Eli being blind the whole time, right? I mean, he moves and looks around like he has sight for two hours, then I'm just supposed to buy that he's been blind the whole time? I probably missed a key detail or something to explain this, because otherwise, it's one of those ideas that sounds cooler as a pitch than in execution*.
*For another example of this "pitch to execution" discrepancy, please refer to season six of Dexter.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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