A post-apocalyptic tale, in which a lone man fights his way across America in order to protect a sacred book that holds the secrets to saving humankind.
Codice Genesi (2010) Online
In a violent post-apocalyptic society, a drifter, Eli, has been wandering westward across North America for the last thirty years. He finds solace in a unique book which he carries on his person and guards closely, whilst surviving by hunting small animals and seeking goods in destroyed houses and vehicles to trade in villages for water and supplies. When he reaches a village ruled by the powerful mobster, Carnegie, the man views Eli's impressive fighting skills and offers Eli a place within his gang. Carnegie presses his blind lover Claudia to send her daughter, Solara, to at least convince Eli to spend the night by sleeping with him. However, Eli proves to be the better man when he gently declines her advances. The girl sees Eli's book, and when Carnegie finds out he beats her mother until she reveals what she saw. Carnegie sends his gang into the wasteland to take the book from Eli, but the man proves to be a formidable foe as he makes it more than clear that if they want the book,...
| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
 | Denzel Washington | - | Eli |
 | Gary Oldman | - | Carnegie |
 | Mila Kunis | - | Solara |
 | Ray Stevenson | - | Redridge |
 | Jennifer Beals | - | Claudia |
 | Evan Jones | - | Martz |
 | Joe Pingue | - | Hoyt |
 | Frances de la Tour | - | Martha (as Frances De La Tour) |
 | Michael Gambon | - | George |
 | Tom Waits | - | Engineer |
 | Chris Browning | - | Hijack Leader |
 | Richard Cetrone | - | Hijacker |
 | Lateef Crowder | - | Hijacker / Construction Thug |
 | Keith Splinter Davis | - | Hijacker (as Keith Davis) |
 | Don Thai Theerathada | - | Hijacker (as Don Theerathada) |
The reason the cannibals' hands shake is that they suffer from Kuru disease - a form of Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease caused by eating human brains or spinal columns. The first symptom is shaking limbs, which is why people check Eli's hands throughout the movie.
Denzel Washington performed all of his own stunts in the hand-to-hand fight sequences.
For the movie, Denzel Washington studied martial arts under Bruce Lee's protégé Dan Inosanto.
Gary Oldman was cast at the suggestion of Denzel Washington.
The film takes place in 2043.
When Eli first sits in the room Carnagie imprisons him in, a poster of the movie A Boy and His Dog (1975) is visible. A Boy and His Dog (1975) is recognized as one of the earliest post-apocalyptic movies, and a source of inspiration for many dystopian and post-apoctalyptic movies and video games.
Eli's speech before he fights Carnegie's men in the bar is taken from Genesis 3:17-19 where God expels Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.
Denzel Washington shed about fifty pounds, in preparation for the role.
The film didn't explicitly mention that the apocalypse was because of a nuclear war; writer Gary Whitta preferred to leave clues of the apocalypse instead. There are a few clues that indicate nuclear war, like the large bomb craters the characters are sometimes near.
Kristen Stewart turned down the role of Solara, due to scheduling conflicts with The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009).
When Eli encounters a group of road bandits, behind them is a tunnel structure with a bold 14:6 written on top. Being a post-apocalyptic movie, that writing can be referenced to an apocalyptic book in the Bible, Revelation. Revelation 14:6 (King James Version): "And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people."
In Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic, Eli can be a variant on the name of God. The suffix "i" indicates first person singular possession, i.e., "my El" or "my God."
The first line of dialogue is spoken almost eight minutes into the film.
The quote that Eli takes from Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison is from "Greystone Chapel," last track on the album. The line comes from the last verse in the song.
The screenplay for this film was featured in the 2007 Blacklist; a list of the "most liked" unmade scripts of the year.
The cooling towers, in which Eli and Solara take refuge, are most likely the cooling towers of the former Rancho Seco Nuclear generating station outside of Sacramento, California, given the apparent travel time on foot and by vehicle before Eli and Solara reach the Golden Gate Bridge, and Carnegie returns to his town.
The names of the characters, George and Martha, are a direct reference to the play 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' by Edward Albee. The play is about an elderly couple who want children so badly, they invent a dead son. Their names here are an ironic reference to the "Father and Mother" of the United States, George and Martha Washington.
After Eli defeats most of the men in Carnegie's bar, Carnegie calls down to have a word with Eli. When Eli looks up at him, there's a bloodstain in the shape of a cross on Eli's forehead.
While the antagonist of the film has the last name Carnegie, who sought out books, Andrew Carnegie was an industrialist/philanthropist in the early 20th century who donated money to communities to build libraries.
The film has many parallels to the Fallout video games, in particular Fallout 3. In both the book and the film, there is a very similar-looking apocalyptic wasteland, gangs of thugs with ambush tactics, self-contained communities, cannibal families and American landmarks being used as places of salvation. Actor Malcolm McDowell appears in both the film and the game, although their characters are not similar.
'Childhood Memories' (composer- Gheorghe Zamfir pan flute artist) was being "whistled" by the villain in the van abducting Solara after they left the church yard scene. The piece was originally composed for Sergio Leone's final film, Once Upon a Time in America (1984).
The book of Eli has nothing to do with the Biblical Character Eli. If you look closely in his back pack when Solara tries to take the book you see his Name tag from Kmart showing his name is Eli.
The sunglasses and backpack Eli used throughout the movie were Oakley brand products.
The tenth film released in select D-BOX enabled cinemas, located in the U.S and Canada. In D-BOX's words, the motion control technology "adds to the movie's plot and underlying themes of fear, terror and explosive action by offering realistic sensations during most of the film's action scenes."
A critic described the film as "Mad Max for the 21st Century". Ironically, five years later, there was a 21st century "Mad Max" movie, starring Tom Hardy.
Denzel Washington (Eli) and Jennifer Beals (Claudia) acted together previously in Devil in a Blue Dress (1995).
The headphones used by Denzel Washington are called Beats by Dr. Dre.
The vehicle, behind which Eli takes cover during the gun battle, is a Rover P6.
Lil' Wayne mentions The Book of Eli in his song "Drip".
Michael Gambon, Frances de la Tour and Gary Oldman starred in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005).
The King James Bible is roughly 789,000 words long. To write it out longhand, at twenty to thirty words per minute, it would take roughly 31,000 minutes. Assuming the writing was done for 8 hours a day, this would take 66 days to complete.
Hints to Eli's condition are shown throughout the movie: In the opening fight, he cuts the man's hand off after being pushed, waiting until he's touched to get a sense of where to direct his blow with his machete. Also he lures the rest of them in to a dark tunnel before fighting them.-In the house at the beginning, Eli looks at the sun from a window, but his eyes don't dialate. He has extraordinary hearing and sense of smell. At one point, after staying the night at the cooling tower ruins, Solara asks Eli how does he know which way to go, to which he replies "We walk by faith, not by sight". He doesn't put on his sunglasses right away when walking outside, like everyone else does (he even appears to be staring directly at the sun). In several scenes sounds of babies, shooting guns, movement and sometimes almost insignificant sounds are emphasized. He searches the shelves of the first house he checks (in the beginning of the movie, before he finds the dead body) by running his hand over them. When he finds the dead body hanging it is very clear that his shock is caused by the doors falling off the hinges, not the sight of the dead person. He even feels the body before being sure of what he is dealing with since he can't see anything. Just before finding the doors hiding the dead body, he runs into an end table with his thigh, as if he didn't see it. As he walks along the highway with Solara, he silences her so that he can hear the bird ("dinner") flying above them. At George and Martha's house, he kicks forward by the first step of the stairs to the porch with his boot so he knows where it is. He never fires his weapon first, needing to hear the sound of shooting at him to identify the location of his target, hence the reason he simply walks away after the last man puts his pistol done after the shootout. His use of a shotgun as a primary weapon means that accuracy is not as critical, allowing for him to aim via sound rather than sight. When Eli and Solara approach the cannibals' (George and Martha) house. As they approach the steps, you can hear a brief clicking sound. Eli is using echolocation to "see" what is ahead of him.George asks Eli about the No Trespassing sign, "Can't you read the sign?" Eli responds, "Didn't see it." -When paying for his trickle charge, he opens a Zippo lighter and passes his hand over the flame to ensure it indeed was lit instead of seeing the flame.
There is a person in the Bible named Eli; he is a highly-devoted priest and, like the movie's main character, he is not born blind, but becomes blind later in life (1 Samuel 3:2).
Throughout the film, it is said that Eli's Bible is the only one remaining. After the newly printed Bible is put on the shelf, beside it, there is a book with a Hebrew headline saying "Tanach." Tanach is the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament of the King James version, meaning part of a Bible was already found, but it's likely no one knew how to read it.
Aside from the film's title, Eli is identified by name only three times. Once, when it appears on a K-Mart name tag inside his backpack, again when Eli introduces himself at Alcatraz Island, lastly on the "head stone" in the end sequence.
Keeping with the film's ideas of religious faith and belief, there is symbolism in the scene where Redridge executes the guard who didn't stop Eli's escape; the guard is shot in the head in front of the corner of two walls, and when the blood spray goes across the walls and down the border of them, it forms the shape of a cross.
The Bible is printed in braille. When Carnagie finally obtains the book he proclaims "He can't be!" Referring to the fact that Eli is blind.
Eli carries a King James Bible that he reads every day, and when he quotes Psalm 23, he quotes it as a New King James Version. Also shown at the end when they are done with transcribing and printing to book.
In the cave scene with Solara, Eli explains that the sun came through the sky to the Earth. This was a reference to the depletion of the ozone layer caused by the war.
The eyes of the biblical Eli, according to 1 Samuel 3:2, "...were becoming so weak that he could barely see..."
During the final act of the film, Eli's voiceover is a prayer monologue. He paraphrases in his own words King James version of 2nd Timothy 4:7.
British-born actors Gary Oldman and Malcolm McDowell have both starred in sci-fi films with settings in an alternate, historical version of San Francisco, Ca. "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" (2014) and "Time After Time" (1979), respectively. Each film had a grim premise for the city's population.
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