Avatar. No. 1. Again. ‘Nuff said about that.
But this weekend, James Cameron’s titanic blue-hued blockbuster had a bit (just a bit) of competition from Denzel Washington’s The Book of Eli, which slid into the No. 2 slot with $31.6 million (compared to Avatar’s $41.3 million) and was the second biggest opening in Washington’s career (just behind American Gangster). The Lovely Bones, in its first week of wide release, finished third with $17.1 million.
Avatar dominance aside, I’ll be really interested in how the R-rated Eli does in the days and weeks to come. I suspect it may have some legs—particularly among Christians.
This is not to say it should, necessarily. It’s got loads of violence, and we know violence isn’t exactly the healthiest stuff to consume in a media diet. But evangelicals have always been a bit more at peace with violence in film than, say, bare bosoms, and frankly, lots of my Christian friends have been asking me about this flick. I know of at least one men’s Bible study (!) that’s attending the film en masse.
And I understand the appeal: Washington’s Eli is, literally, on a mission from God—protecting the last Bible on earth with all the vim and vigor his gun-toting, blade-thwacking self can muster. It’s got just scads of really powerful, really positive messages and lots of ideas to discuss. I particularly liked the twist at the end—where Eli’s book is worthless to the man who doesn’t have the heart or wherewithal to understand it.
It has the sort of spiritual themes I’d love to show and discuss with my teenage kids—if it wasn’t for all the flying blood and hacked limbs and cannibalism and such.
In my review, I essentially said that Eli‘s violence doesn’t nullify Eli‘s message. But neither does Eli‘s message excuse its violence. The tension between these two elements made it a particularly tricky film for me to review.
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