By Paula L. Woods

While the collaboration of Academy award winner Denzel Washington with Allen and Albert Hughes may seem like a case of strange bedfellows, it’s not as unusual as one might think.

When then 20-year old twins professionally known as the Hughes Brothers broke into moviemaking with their debut film—the 1993 urban drama Menace II Society—they caused an uproar among critics, some of whom found the brothers’ work exhilarating, while others despaired of their depiction of the bleak lives of disaffected urban youth. Regardless of the divided opinions, Menace grossed over $27 million and, along with Boyz N the Hood and South Central, ushered in a wave of urban dramas that have, for better or worse, been a cornerstone of black representation in film.

The Hughes Brothers followed their debut with two more urban films—1995’s Dead Presidents and the 1999 documentary American Pimp—before changing up and directing the film version of the graphic novel From Hell, an atmospheric tale about the hunt for Jack the Ripper in Victorian London. In the process, the brothers gained increased, although not universal, critical respect for plunging the viewer into a nightmarish world as threatening as any urban landscape they had heretofore explored.

Such boldness and singularity of vision had to be attractive to Washington, who has made some bold choices of roles of late, most notably Training Day and American Gangster. So while the apocalyptic thriller, The Book of Eli, marks yet another departure for Washington and the Hughes Brothers in terms of theme, it contains the same verve and energy the collaborators have brought to their various prior efforts and considerably greater technical skill on the part of the filmmakers.

Drawing heavily on various Westerns and Japanese martial arts films of the 1960s and 1970s, Eli tells the story of a solitary “walker” (Denzel Washington) who has wandered across America thirty years after an apocalyptic war that has ravaged the landscape and destroyed American (and presumably world) society. Eli (whose name we presume because of a nametag on a backpack he carries) is a survivor in more ways than one, living by a violent, idiosyncratic code that allows him to shoot a scavenging house pet, only to later share the kill with the pet’s traditional prey.

Washington plays Eli with a gravity that is effective if unintentionally funny, especially in the early scenes when he mows down a half dozen or more attackers in the space of thirty seconds and concludes the carnage with stealing their possessions and a healing prayer. With his lethal martial arts skills to get him through the days and Bible study and Al Green on his MP3 player to take the edge off the night, Eli is a man on a mission, responding to a call to shepherd a rare book West.

Along the way, his portable battery conks out, leading him to an outpost as lawless as Dodge City or Tombstone, seeking a charge (from musician Tom Waits, in a humorous turn) in exchange for KFC hand wipes and a lighter. It’s a place where barter has replaced currency, people scurry like rats along a Main Street strewn with abandoned cars and the town’s Orpheum Theatre serves as the makeshift saloon, brothel and bad guy hangout. Presiding over this netherworld is Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a viscous despot who we meet reading a biography of Mussolini (just in case the other visual clues don’t tell you that he’s not a nice man).

But Mussolini is not the book Carnegie covets, sending his minions instead in search of a singular book that could “control the minds of the weak and the desperate.” It seems that most books were destroyed after the Final War that Eli explains “tore a hole in the sky and burned up everything,” including every copy of the book Carnegie seeks. Except Eli’s, setting up the two men for a bloody confrontation of wills and weapons that consumes most of the film. And while Eli has some finely honed senses, superior martial arts skills (Washington does his own impressive stunts) and Biblical quotations on his side, Carnegie brings to bear an army of requisite henchmen, superior firepower and the feminine wiles of his blind wife Claudia (a glowing Jennifer Beals) and stepdaughter Solaris (Mila Kunis), both of whom are sent to spy on and seduce Eli. Seeing Washington and Beals work together, however briefly, will have a particular resonance for those who remember the actors’ chemistry in Devil in a Blue Dress, while Kunis brings energy to her role reminiscent of a younger Angelina Jolie.

And while Tom Waits’ turn as Eli’s Mr. Fixit and one notably comical scene with survivalists Michael Gambon and Frances De La Tour serve to break the tension, the main attraction is the clash of acting titans Washington and Oldman, whose characters, men from the time “before,” are equally matched in their drive to control the fate of the coveted book. Although anyone who’s seen the advertising campaign for The Book of Eli can figure out the book in question, what will be surprising is how well the Hughes Brothers manage to forge an unlikely alliance between faith with a cinematic brutality that will keep you watching in horrified awe even if you walk away thinking the parts of the film, especially a Sixth Sense-style twist and overly long, religiously correct epilogue, are a little far-fetched.

Implausible plot elements of Garry Whitta’s script aside, the Hughes Brothers have made a visually compelling film that puts a unique thrill into the apocalyptic genre. From the monochromatic, bleak landscape, shot in New Mexico and featuring the production design of Gae Buckley (Good Night & Good Luck) and camera work of Don Burgess (Spider-Man, Terminator 3), to the crisp visual effects of Jon Farhat (Wanted) and stunt coordination and fight choreography of Jeff Imada (notable for his work in The Bourne Ultimatum), The Book of Eli will keep you glued to your seat, cheering for Eli on his journey from man of action to man of faith.

Paula L. Woods reviews films exclusively for The Defenders Online and books for various newspapers, including The Los Angeles Times.