Book of Eli: Apocalypse, Sarah Palin Style

The Book of Eli is almost certainly the best post-apocalypic Christian action movie you'll see this year, say critics, although many were put off by the preaching.

• The directors scored with the casting—Denzel Washington as a grizzled gunslinger protecting the world's last Bible—the fight scenes and the explosions, Derek Malcolm of the Evening Standard writes in a spoiler-laden review. But the message is overkill. "The result is like The Road rewritten by Sarah Palin for the greater good of Alaska and mankind."

• Bill Goodykoontz of the Arizona Republic was more tolerant, with the over-the-top violence putting him in mind of the film version of a never-written graphic novel. "If one must wander a barren, post-apocalyptic landscape with somebody," he asks, "who better to wander with than Denzel Washington?"
• Claudia Puig at USA Today agrees about Washington, but finds poetic psalms uttered amid stylized violence disconcerting. Religion and bloodshed." she writes, "make queasy entertainment partners."
• And Owen Glieberman of Entertainment Weekly thinks the post-apocalyptic road movie genre, now about 35 years old, is showing its age. Eli is a "ponderous dystopian bummer that might be described as The Road Warrior without car chases, or The Road without humanity," he writes.

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