What are the essential things you’ll need to survive in a post-apocalyptic world? According to Denzel Washington’s character in The Book of Eli, a first-generation iPod, some KFC refresher towels and a whole lotta faith.

But why bother, really, if it’s as dull and bland as this. The Book of Eli is yet another film set in a dystopian future which, aside from some preachy religious pretentions, has far too much in common with Mad Max 2 and The Road to really warrant its existence.

Washington wanders the forsaken highways as Eli, one of few to survive the apocalypse that turned almost everything into dust many years earlier. Although he’s a man of great faith, he seems quite happy breaking sixth commandment “thou shall not kill” on a regular basis in order to protect a special book he carries. It’s this book that Carnegie (Gary Oldman), the coldblooded leader of a ramshackle town in the middle of the American desert, will do anything to get his hands on. When Eli wanders into his town, Carnegie forces his partner’s beautiful daughter Solara (Mila Kunis) to seduce him and recover the book. But the blade-wielding Eli isn’t about to hand it over without a fight…

While the end of the world scenario has been done to death, the screenplay by former magazine editor Gary Whitta does pertain to some interesting concepts such as religion’s power to both harmoniously unite and devastatingly divide. The problem, however, lies with the drip-fed method of storytelling, where information is divulged so gosh-darn slowly throughout the films overlong 117 minute runtime, our interest ends up well and truly parched by the thirty minute mark. Since we’re told criminally little of who Eli is or how the apocalypse occurred, the only real questions remaining are of the ‘what’ and ‘why’ variety: what is the book and why is it so important?

The answers to these questions are blatantly obvious from the word go as The Hughes Brothers, in their first film since 2001s From Hell, aren’t exactly well versed in subtlety. They’re under the impression that the more slow-mo walks down an empty road Washington does, the cooler and more interesting their film will be. Not the case.

That said, veteran cinematographer Don Burgess does have a few fancy camera tricks up his sleeve, evident in the climactic action scene where Eli, Soloara and an eccentric elderly couple – the scene stealing Frances de la Tour and Michael Gambon — hole up in a house for a shoot-out with Carnegie’s men. Here, Burgess circles the action with a single take — or perhaps multiple takes cleverly edited together to look seamless — which provides the scene with a thrilling and fluid sense of time and space. What’s a shame is that the rest of the film, complete with the typical washed-out hues and destroyed cityscapes, has to look like every other post-apocalyptic film to date.

With all of his expressions hidden behind sunglasses and stubble, Washington doesn’t do much more than walk around pouting his lips as Eli. If he wasn’t the only person on screen for the first fifteen minutes — not to mention the only good-natured person for the first hour — he’d be a hard character to care for given how little he is characterised. Gary Oldman is far more engaging as the ruthless Carnegie, a caricatured baddie whom Oldman enjoyably hams-up in the same way Bill Nighy (Underworld) and John Travolta (Swordfish) have in the past.

If they’re not being ransacked and raped, most of the female characters in support are chauvinistically used as bait. While Mila Kunis gets her chance to stick it to the man as Solara, her transition from hapless bar-girl to warrior princess is ludicrously abrupt. Unfortunately, it also paves the way for a sequel.

There’s a final twist in The Book of Eli that attempts to fool the audience into thinking there was more substance to the film than we originally thought. Instead, it causes so many plot holes to arise, it makes it easier to just dismiss the film as the pretentious nonsense it really is. I mean, are we really supposed to believe that an iPod’s battery life will outlast religion?

I call bullshit.

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