The End of the Page

The Book of Eli: Slick Style with Rough Substance

Somewhere out there, there is a snack shack waiting for me.

Rating: 4 out of 10

One type of movies has recently been building in the nationwide queue, Apocalypse films. We stared in wide-eyed wonder at the destruction imagined in 2012, felt the weight of despair in the bleak future of The Road and even the magical CGI-fueled paradise of Avatar can be classified as apocalyptic since that was the reason for the human expansion to Pandora. This week we bear witness to a little twist, a holy light in the gray darkness of the cold and dusty future, a film that suggests in the aftermath of what is to come you can only truly survive by pure and unadulterated faith. Nothing like a good dose of God to add spice to the end of the world.

The Book of Eli is a moral fable about a man, most commonly referred to as “The Walker”, who sets out on a journey west to find the one and only safe harbor left in the world for the precious book he is carrying. He crosses paths with the worst and the best (but mostly the worst) of what humanity has become in the wake of some type of nuclear holocaust. The extent of his survival skills is impressive, but it pales in comparison to his determination and resolve to reach the destination told to him only a voice in his head.  The road gets rougher as he passes through a town where the man in charge knows all too well the power of the book he is carrying and decides to claim it for his own.

Let’s start out with the nice things first, cause that is just the polite thing to do. As you can see from the picture above, there was a clear choice in visual tone to bring about this monochromatic, muted color palette to the world after the war. There was some incredibly stark imagery and compelling wide shots of our main traveler trekking across sheer emptiness and ruined wastelands. I was quietly pleased with that portion of the film, and only that portion, until I was reminded by the ending credits that this cross between Mad Max and The Road was directed by Albert and Allen Hughes, otherwise known as The Hughes Brothers. Looking back at their last film, From Hell, I suddenly put together all the pieces. The Book of Eli succeeded and suffered in the exact same way.

The Hughes Brothers have developed a style of powerful visuals and interesting color schemes, but they seem to forget about the rest of the recipe. The story lingers on in a menacingly slow fashion, broken up by frantic acts of violence, but a real ebb and flow is never truly achieved. Also, I will hold back all inclinations to what the third act twist is, but just know it left me extremely disappointed. I stand by the idea that films win or lose their audiences in the last five minutes and I was not only lost, but banging my head against the wall in order to develop short term amnesia. There were a good handful of ways the story could have ended, but they went with honestly the worst of the bunch.

In terms of acting, I actually thought Denzel Washington had a few really impressive scenes and it was nice to see him a little bit outside of the cocky, tough guy role that he was pigeonholed into over the last decade (like Man on Fire, Inside Man and his oscar-winning turn in Training Day.) Mila Kunis also stepped up for most of the film, yet I lost her when she started to become the rough and tumble chick again. She has a self-assuredness and confidence to her which works really well, but once she starts packing heat and sliding into some femme fatale position (ala Max Payne) she ends up a caricature instead of a character. Lastly there is Gary Oldman, who really has been playing parts like this for years. It’s not his best work by far, but even with that said, he still commands attention when on screen. His performance ended up making me imagine he was playing his same character from Leon, just many, many years older.

The End of the Page Recommendation: Honestly, I love religiously themed movies, especially if someone involved is carrying a crazy sharp machete, but this felt heavy-handed and preachy. A vain attempt was made at the end to balance that out, but it failed to remove the weight left by the previous hours. If you can get a copy of the actual 35mm film, find some of the really pretty shots, blow them up into posters and just be happy with that.

Quantum of Solace: Big Bang, Little Else

Why did I park so far away on opening night. I’m gonna miss the previews!

Rating: 5 out of 10

There are characters out there so iconic, so ingrained into the hearts and minds of the viewing public, that when a new chapter in the series emerges we rush out opening weekend, our hands clutching popcorn and our eyes pasted wide. Only a chosen few have made it into this cherished realm of public trust, but none as long and as stylishly as James Bond. This weekend brought his newest episode, Quantum of Solace, and it marked the second in the reign of current Bond persona, Daniel Craig. He broke out the gates with extreme critical and public appeal in the remake of Casino Royale, but now it was time to see if he could keep up the excitement and appeal.

Excitement, yes. Appeal, less so.

Besides being incredibly well dressed at almost all times, Bond is known for action and this chapter goes for the gusto from the moment the cameras roll. The movie opens with an impressive car chase, which inevitably leads our hero from overcrowded roadways into a wonderfully photographed rock quarry. It was a bold choice to jump right into the action without any set up whatsoever, but for those out there who somehow avoided seeing Casino Royale, it definitely helps to understand where this scene fits in (approximately twenty minutes from the ending of the last film). Lots of gunplay, screeching tires and near misses bring the curtain up nicely, but having a strong opening does not guarantee audience support for the rest of the film. We need to be taken on a journey, not just shown an amazingly expensive episode of Fear Factor. There needs to be plot and story behind the action to raise it up, but Quantum had very little in the area of foundation.

The story jumps around incredibly fast, not enough to lose sense of what is going on, but just enough to not give us time to invest. The Bond movies seem almost addicted to making every scene take place in a different foreign country, which makes for some great camera shots, but terrible continuity of scenes. Also, much of this movie was sub-textually about James Bond mourning the loss of his love from the last film and barely controlling his rage while seeking revenge. We fully got the revenge motif, but the mourning was shown only in the thinnest of manners. A nicked photograph and an old necklace were the only links to his emotional center, but they were rarely used in the brief moments between gunfire and roof jumping.

On the adrenalin front, Bond delivers as usual. One of the nice changes I feel to the modern day Bond is the older films used to show him skillfully sliding from one place to another, jumping and landing perfectly on any surface and so forth, but Craig makes every leap seem based solely on guts and gusto, not tact and talent. Throughout the movie, he lands on balconies and terraces by crashing into some random piece of furniture. The only reason the bad guys don’t get away from him is the dogged determination which forms the core of who the Bond character is. I think the rougher, tougher Bond is an obvious reflection on society today and what we want to see in a hero. Not so much a person who can dodge a bullet, but one who can take two shots to the leg, one to the arm and an uppercut, yet still win the fight.

Surrounding Bond as always are a bevy of beautiful women and a cabal of agents, both on his side and against. Gemma Arterton was mentioned a while back, by myself and others, as a “Bond Girl”, yet in this episode she is actually not the top of that food chain. Olga Kurylenko is the alpha female here and is a much more complex character. In the beginning her and Bond are on completely different tracks, but over the course of ninety minutes of insanity their paths intertwine, both strategically and emotionally. While not being a complete knock out performance, she is steadily improving over her turns in the unfortunate back-to-back duo of Hitman and Max Payne. Gemma, definitely worth mentioning, does finally bring a little taste of the classic Bond, just enough for an homage to the old days of Connery and Moore. Her sultry style hearkens back to the female characters of the early films and makes us remember why we love to visit the world of Bond so much. Also, without revealing a blatant spoiler, her role brings up the most direct recall from one of the most well known Bond moments. Feel free to let me know if you see it (it’s hard to miss). Now Bond would be nothing without a dastardly villain to track down and capture and this time it’s provided to us by Mathieu Amalric. A very popular and well rewarded star in the French cinema, this marked the American debut of Mathieu, who played the corrupt CEO with the world’s creepiest stare, Dominic Greene. While I do understand not every Bond villain has to be one who can last a round with him in a fist fight, in fact many of them don’t fit that category, but something about the final confrontation between these two didn’t sit right. So much had to be stacked against Bond to make this even halfway feasible and even then I found myself wondering why it was lasting so long. In cases like this, I find it’s better to give the villain a skilled right hand man, who endures the final fight, and let the boss deliver a final speech before giving up or blowing up.

Orbiting around Bond are some other side characters, but the only ones worth mentioning are Judi Dench who returns to continue her role as M, Jeffery Wright as the CIA agent with a working conscience and Giancarlo Giannini as Mathis, the convict turned trusted friend of Bond. All of these actors did a fine job in their limited screen time, but even they couldn’t hold up the lack of plot or story connectivity.

Recommendation: Quantum of Solace is good for some action, but a lackluster follow-up to Casino Royale, the relaunch of the Bond franchise. The execs are going to have to wipe the drawing board clean once again and see if they can’t relight the spark they just had, because one more like this and the fickle crowd will start murmuring to fix the problem with yet another new actor as Bond, which is not the answer. Plus, in my humble opinion, Daniel Craig was born to play this part. So, catch the afternoon matinee if you are drawn to the tradition, but if not, try re-watching Casino Royale. Homemade popcorn is better anyway.

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