The Book of Eli: A jumping-off point

Sunday afternoon—the perfect time to catch a flick. Sure, I should be in church, but I’m not. I’ve lapsed. Also, the fact that most of my friends are atheists doesn’t help. Not that it has any effect on my beliefs, but it’d be nice to occasionally be among the flock. That’s not the point, though; the point is that Sunday afternoon is normally a great time to see a movie without having to worry about the sort of cursed experiences I usually endure: crying babies, loud talking and ass-hats that refuse to put their phones away. My incredibly annoying trips to the movies have been well documented in this very paper.



This trip was no different: There was a couple having some sort of Spanish domestic dispute while they used their outside voices. Of course, they were directly behind me. I’m beginning to think this is happening on purpose. The phrase “Silencio in el cinema!” didn’t occur to me until I was in the parking lot. Dios mio!

Enough about that, though.

Book of Eli is the new flick by the Hughes Brothers. Some other flicks they have co-directed are Menace to Society and Dead Presidents. If you haven’t seen these films it means that you are white. I forgive you, but stop Tweeting about FarmVille and add these flicks to your queue.

Now, move them to the top of the &^%$ queue!!

If you’re black, then you bought terrible bootlegged copies at the salon or barbershop because you don’t like going to the movies, and it costs too much and you use that money to get your nails did/done. Stop that. You’re embarrassing all of us!

The Book of Eli is a flick about life after the end of the world, the terrible people that exist there and the attempt by good people and bad people to use a certain set of sacred ideas to move civilization in completely opposite directions. That’s all I’m willing to say about the plot. I don’t like to give away too much of films I actually enjoy.

For instance, when I see Sex and the City 2, the Squeakuel I intend to spill alllllll of that film’s intricate secrets and clever word play right here in the back of the paper. I’ll do this without warning you of “spoilers,” and I’ll do it while coming up with new and exciting ways to call all of the actresses in the film UGLY.

Perhaps I’ll see it on a Wednesday afternoon. That way I can live Tweet about it and there won’t be anyone around to disturb. I mean, I may be an ass but I’m not a &#@%ing ass!

But with Eli, no such luck. I really liked it, so I can’t give anything away. Sorry.

I can talk about how excited seeing a good ass-whipping or gun battle still makes me feel. There is something to be said for good, old-fashioned movie violence. I don’t mean the stuff from the Saw or Hostel films—or “Torture Porn,” as critics so “cleverly” call it.

I mean situations like a guy realizing too late that he picked a fight with a bad ass and then having to retrieve pieces of himself from the ground in the aftermath. It’s just good to be back in the house that Willis, Stallone and Schwarzenegger built in the nineties. Eli gives me a few really cool instances of bad people getting their violent comeuppance.

While I sat in the theatre watching the movie and listening to Charo and Officer Frank “Ponch” Poncherello jabber on behind me, I started to think.

I don’t think I’ll do well in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

I have my plans for a zombie holocaust, be it old-school Romero-style zombies, quick and tricky Dan O’Bannon-style ghouls or rage-infected sprinters. There is a contingency for each situation. Believe me, you don’t want to trust in guns. As much as you’ll be afraid to, you’re going to want to get in close and use your hands.

If a global pandemic is the way we’re wiped off the face of the Earth, so be it. We had a good run. I just hope that it doesn’t hurt.

If it’s good old-fashioned Revelations, you might think running to church is the answer. Wrong. At the end of the world, church will be filled with fair-weather Christians and people that were converted by the sight of their heathen friends melting into the ground. Church will be ground zero for Old Testament fire bombings at the end of the world. Verboten! You’re safer at home.

But if there is some sort of nuclear fallout situation that leads to a scorched earth and traveling bands of marauders, cannibalism, war over water, Thunderdome and Master Blaster, I’m not going to be any good at that. Let’s face it. I’ll be relegated to being the fat guy in a gas mask with no shirt that stands behind the bad guy. I’ll be the first guy that the righteous hero fights to prove that he’s not to be messed with. I will, inevitably, end up scrambling in the dust looking for the missing pieces that the good guy had to cut from my body to prove that we should have just let him pass.

In the weeks since Avatar cured leprosy and made the blind see, lots of people have come to the realization that there’s not much else to it beyond being really pretty. It’s like dating a model—I mean, if you actually want to talk to the model. If looks are all you care about, then godspeed, captain.

There is also the sad fact that now, what was essentially a 3D gimmick film has made Eleventy Trajillion dollars, EVERY movie in the near future will have 3D technology forced onto it whether it matters to the story or not. James Bond is going to be 3D now. Every summer film is threatening to be in three dimensions.

If I’m forced to sit through Sex and the City 3D: Jason Lives, I swear that I’ll eat aquarium gravel until I’m dead.

But Book of Eli was interesting to look at and had a story that didn’t shame and insult me.

It won’t make 68 billion space credits like Avatar, but you should see it anyway. You may just like it. Gracias.

J’mel Davidson’s stories appear each week in Birmingham Weekly. Write him at jmel@bhamweekly.com