Gary Oldman: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

2. Carnegie €“ The Book Of Eli (2012)

Stupid though Hannibal is, it's by no means the most idiotic blockbuster Hollywood has put out in the past decade. A serious contender for that honour, meanwhile, is The Book Of Eli, a seriously misguided post-apocalyptic thriller from The Hughes Brothers, previously known for superior comic book adaptation From Hell and searing gangland drama Menace II Society. It all went a bit !*$% up with this story of Denzel Washington traipsing across the desert. His Eli is a nomad who is told by a voice to deliver his copy of a mysterious book to a safe location on the West Coast of the United States, navigating a dangerous post-war world along the way. It's a film predicated on a bleak, kinda dull landscape and a serious of increasingly ridiculous twists, from the reveal that Eli is blind (despite kicking ass in a number of fight scenes), and that the book is The Bible. Were it not for the all-star cast, The Book Of Eli would be easy to write off as another High Concept action film with nothing new to offer. And yet opposite Washington in the title role is Gary Oldman, as the leader of a new settlement who wishes to possess the book, and is one of many generic bad guy roles way below his station the actor has sadly fallen into as of late.