BOOK OF ELI: Art of Reading without Reading

by Dr. Craig Reid

In BOOK OF ELI, directed by the twin brothers Allen and Albert Hughes, Denzel Washington joins the ranks of "martial arts-trained" actors like Liam Neeson (TAKEN), Nicolas Cage (BANGKOK DANGEROUS), Christian Bale (BATMAN BEGINS), Matt Damon (The BOURNE films) and Mel Gibson (whose EDGE OF DARKNESS comes out in two weeks). They're not really martial artists but actors who've devoted some time to learning a few kicks, spins, punches and slices that get translated into a handful of short action fight sequences, which are not the core of the film or the character but add a new dimension of cool rock and roll to the pugilistic music of the movie. Washington's BOOK OF ELI fight performance is actually a perfect marriage to his portrayal as Eli because, like a wedding ceremony, the tradition is to have something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue; and in an ultra-familiar and peculiar way this movie went beyond the call of "I do" duty.

So what's new? Washington plays a solitary and literal bible puncher named Eli who is walking across an apocalyptic wasteland (reminisicent of the eeriness of PLANET OF THE APES (1968)) that was once America. Thirty years into the future, America is a seared wasteland, littered with empty cities and broken highways. Despite recognizable deteriorated landmarks that tell us what humans have done, there are no gorillas, chimps and orangutans; instead, gangs who will kill for an ounce of water or a hotel-sized bottle of water control the roads. The leader of the most dangerous pack in this ruined world is Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a pseudo-pope wannabe bent on controlling the Un-United States of America by getting his devilish claws on a most prized possession that Eli has been appointed to guard. Eli's mission, not of choice but of necessity, is to head West and deliver a book into the right hands, before the wrong hands of Carnegie blasphemies humanity.

"What we liked about this story was that it was an action adventure but it also had something to say about commitment, sacrifice, survival and human nature," shares Allen.

Brother Albert adds, "THE BOOK OF ELI takes us to a future that is decimated, whether by war, nuclear or natural disasters, or any combination of events, it doesn't matter. The devastation is total and that allowed us to speculate about how the world would look and how people would manage if the whole grid was wiped out and we were thrown back into a primitive way of life. There would be a lot of lawlessness. But, in time, there might be a few brave individuals who would regain a sense of purpose and take up the mantle of leadership."

The Hughes brothers see Eli as one of those few brave individuals who might become part of the brave new world. He is steadfast in his mission and he is armed with a razor-sharp sword that comes from nowhere when he is forced to stop doing something, as in being told to "cut it out." But his surgical approach to fulfilling his operation comes without pay, as it is Eli who pays the high price for following his conscience.

"So who is this Eli," Allen rhetorically asks. "He is an enigmatic lone warrior, almost mythical. You know there's a rich backstory, but it shouldn't be entirely revealed, and Denzel was conscientious about doing little things that would shed light into his past without spelling it out. One of his ideas was for Eli to bear a burn scar on his back as a mark of the catastrophe he has survived. He was very good at painting in those kinds of details that would add to Eli's mystique."

According to Allen, another of the film's important plot points is that despite Eli's singular goal to deliver the book, part of Eli's journey also involves lessons he's not yet aware he needs to learn. "When Eli crosses through Carnegie's town, he becomes the focus of some unwelcome attention," Allen notes. "Not only from Carnegie, who wants to destroy him, but from Carnegie's orphaned stepdaughter, Solara (Mila Kunis), an innocent who reminds him that being human means dealing with other human beings. In his desire to protect the book, he thinks of nothing else, but part of his responsibility might also be to open himself up, to really give and do more for others.

"He's been entrusted with carrying the book, but he must also remember to carry its message. It could be the final test of his particular mission, and he is very reluctant to take it on. Furthermore, Kunis had a great ability to convey vulnerability mixed with boldness and optimism, all of which define Solara as she ventures into a realm with Eli, a realm she has long been denied."

Which brings us to the question: what's old? Does any of this sound familiar? Well, there is one obvious thing and one not so obvious thing (unless you really know your martial arts films). What Allen was describing about who Eli is closely resembles the character Carson from the 1975 futuristic end of the world atomic holocaust film THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR, where Yul Brynner as Carson uses a single knife to become a human vegematic to take out the leader of a vicious gang headed by a man named Carrot. And the unobvious?

For comparison sake let me summarize the BOOK OF ELI. It's a post-apocalyptic world; Eli is a lone warrior with a sword who, while making his way toward a single surviving city, must defend himself from rogue road warriors, an old cannibalistic family and a crazed villain trying to stop him. Along the road Eli saves Solara (Mila Kunis), a lone child of a single mother. This young lady decides to play tag-along to become Eli's rescuer. Does this synopsis sound familiar to anyone?

If you have seen SIX-STRING SAMURAI (1998), starring Jeff Falcon, then the familiarity is obvious. On the surface, Falcon plays a lone warrior named Buddy in a post-apocalyptic world, who is good with a sword and while traveling to a surviving city he befriends an orphaned child who eventually rescues Buddy. According to a 1998 interview I did with SIX-STRING's director Lance Munigia, the orphan boy was a reminder to Buddy that although Buddy walked the lone path in a destroyed world, he had to remember that he must still remain human, and "adopting" the boy was part of that journey. SIX-STRING is basically THE WIZARD OF OZ meets LONE WOLF AND CUB a la Hong Kong's far-out and frenetically paced Fant-Asia swordplay films. You've got a Buddy Holly look-a-like main character armed with a six-string guitar and samurai sword, searching for Las Vegas while being chased by a Guns'n'Roses Slash-like heavy metal guitarist while also battling the Spinach Monster, the Windmill God, the Russian Army and a variety of other rock-and-roll swordsman wannabes. Ultimately both SIX STRING and BOOK OF ELI end exactly the same.

Veteran stunt coordinator Jeff Imada choreographed the film's circular martial arts-influenced fights to reveal the breadth of Eli's hard-won survival skills. Imada proudly recalls, "In BOOK OF ELI we were going for some street-oriented fighting, where we used a lot of weaponry, some knife fighting, sword and stick fighting; you will see Eli using his environment to defend himself, facing multiple opponents coming at him like a pack of wolves, and some one-on-ones. Anything goes."

Preparation for these brutal sequences attest to Washington's dedication. As is becoming more common in Hollywood with stars of action films, Washington put in many months of hard work and training in order to add an air of authenticity to the fluid fights that the Hughes brothers wanted, which meant fight scenes captured in a single take and without the support of a stunt double.

"Denzel really stepped up to the plate," avers Allen. "There was a lot of physically demanding scenes and we weren't cutting around it and making him look good. He really had to do it straight through and he pulled it off. It was amazing."

Working with renowned martial arts practitioner Dan Inosanto, who Bruce Lee credited as the best teacher of Lee's "art of fighting without fighting," Imada subjected Washington to what he calls "total immersion." It was a discipline not unfamiliar to the actor, who famously worked out for a year with boxing pro Terry Claybon for his Oscar-nominated role as middleweight champion Rubin "Hurricane" Carter in THE HURRICANE and has continued to use the sport to keep in shape.

Imada touts, "We put Denzel through a crash course in all different aspects and techniques of fighting and pulled it all together for the final result, which is a combination of various different styles of martial arts and hand-to-hand combat skills. Denzel, Danny and me, together we worked on a fighting style for Eli that was an amalgamation of skills he would have developed the hard way, on the road."

Albert purports, "Denzel also learned to expertly handle a blade as if it was an extension of his arm. Eli's weapon of choice was originally conceived as a Samurai-style sword but we and Denzel opted for a shorter, machete-hybrid design, a less formal design that better suited the lone traveler's circumstances, something he could easily conceal under his backpack and grasp quickly when needed."

Allen interjects, "It is essential that Eli was not a combat veteran or some super soldier who would already have remarkable skills. We wanted him to be a nobody, an everyman. Through him and what he's able to do, you see how people would have to adapt to stay alive. Denzel understood that audiences would have to buy these fight scenes to buy into his character and the story."

Both the look and function of Eli's eclectic arsenal and fighting style are part of his character. In Eli's hands, a knife is not only for self-defense, but also for hunting and cleaning. His response to the highwaymen, Carnegie's hitmen and others who confront him is likewise instinctive and visceral and calls into play all of this accumulated knowledge. Imada adds, "He had to be able to face down his adversaries with proficiency but not appear to be trained in any specific system, where people are grabbing and pulling at him, punching and kicking him all at the same time."

It is the opening fight scene that Washington does against five thugs that produces a chill up my back. It looked like something I choreographed 14 years ago for an ABC TV show called SPY GAME, produced by Sam Raimi. It was my first gig in Hollywood and the stunt coordinator of that show asked me to storyboard all my ideas for the fight scenes – so I would constantly hand him sheets of paper with outlined fight sequences drawn on them. I would then demonstrate the fight scenes using the various stuntmen and stuntwomen who would be in the fight. The one fight I'm thinking of was in the episode called, MAX DROPS THE BALL when we were filming outside of LA in a wooded area devastated by fires the year before, so the outside environment was curiously apocalyptic. When I learned kung fu fight choreography in Taiwan in the 1970s and 1980s, it was normal to create a fight of up to 20 or so techniques that would be shot in one take. After I demonstrated the fight as such with the various stuntmen to the stunt coordinator, he said, "Too circular." I was taken aback because how else could you do a realistic fight against a handful of opponents? His way was one at a time using linear attacks. So when I saw the opening familiar fight scene also being shot in one, unedited take, I was as surprised as I was amazed. My mouth dropped further when the closing credits revealed that the fight choreographer/stunt coordinator was Imada. Cool… something borrowed.

Which comes to the final part of the wedding metaphor… something blue. The emotion of the film is blue. Eli has been under so much combative duress that he is essentially covered in black and blue, and most importantly, because Washington's first fight is shot wide angle (in one unedited take), and his subsequent fights do not use the typical Hollywood "hide what is going on" camera approach (tight angles, MTV editing, shaky camera), in terms of the fight one cannot say that the filmmakers "blew it."

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Written by Dr. Craig Reid for KUNGFUMAGAZINE.COM

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