By Robert Dixter Jan 15, 2010, 16:32 GMT
Eeeeeeli’s coming! Wasn’t that a Three Dog Night song? Or a One Cat Twilight song? Anyway, point is that January is usually a time for studios to dump some junky movie with Wilmer Valderrama into theaters or to expand their Oscar hopefuls to wide releases (see Lovely Bones, or don’t). But this year we’re getting a post apocalyptic action piece with Denzel Washington called The Book of Eli, and I’m betting there won’t be a whole lot of reading going on! (That should be on the poster).
I thought I was going to have to wait until the summer for an A-list star action film, but between this and Sherlock Holmes I might just get my fix.
Denzel always delivers a solid performance whether it’s a drama like Philadelphia or an action movie like Taking of Pelham. The guy just commands the screen, probably because he owns two Academy Awards (it’s always nice to have two, so they can play with each other, like your children).
The film is directed by the Hughes brothers. These guys are twin brothers that actually seem to work well as a team. If you’ve seen Shaft or The Pursuit of Happyness, good for you. Those films weren’t directed by the Hughes. They did Menace 2 Society years ago, followed that with Dead Presidents, and then the Johnny Depp comic book movie From Hell. They haven’t made a fictional film since 2001 but they made more than a mark when they debuted with Menace 2 Society. It was one of the rawest films of the 90’s and made Boyz N the Hood look like an afterschool special.
That film had no stars in it but every performance was honest and real, and the violence was shocking in its brutality and openness. The Hughes have a way of shooting action sequences that make them look cool but not stylized and treated like the Wachowskis. They bring a certain style to their films without making it too obvious. From Hell could have been a watered down comic book film like Daredevil or Fantastic Four but the Hughes made it believable and still feel like it was from another time and place.
The thing that either sells a film like this or kills it is the performance and casting of its villain, and in Gary Oldman you do not have to worry. Think John Malkovich in In The Line of Fire or Heath Ledger in Dark Knight. Those guys knew how to ham it up as a bad guy without going overboard and making the viewer feel like they were watching a bad Stallone film from the 80’s. Oldman falls into that category too. He’s an actor’s actor and knows not to cross the line with over the top theatrics.
All in all this film has what I’m looking for, great actors, clever action premise, and two directors who are identical twins. It’s the last of these criteria that has made it very difficult for me to find a film with all three. Count me in this weekend, and wouldn’t you rather see Book of Eli too than waste your time trying to see Oscar hopefuls before the nominations are even announced?
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