 here on here on movies the movie show movies in movies the movie show we call it we're with George Kason and me and we do this every couple weeks and we review a movie and this one is really odd it's probably like no other movie we've ever reviewed George but I want to tell you in advance George this is George Kason our movie reviewer and a graduate student at the University of Hawaii George I disagree with you completely I want you to know that now going in in advance about this movie okay the book of Eli Denzel Washington but why don't you tell your view of it and then I will tell you why I disagree with you completely okay I don't know what you're gonna disagree with but my view is this is post-apocalypse world after the nuclear war shows what the nuclear war will do to the world right and you've got this guy Denzel Washington is playing by Eli by Denzel Washington and he is on a trek across the United States and you see all this desolation from one end to the other it's like the back to the Wild West so as he's going across right Mad Max Mad Max at Thunderdome you know movies better than I do but the thing is he gets all these roving gangs that are trying to attack him you know you know to get whatever is in his backpack but they don't even know what is there but they they go and they hurt a lot of people you know just regular people to get grabbed their food or grab whatever else so he's got great powers you know he's able to kill like seven or eight guys that are attacking you know and he's going across and he comes to this town which is like Carlisle Templin or whatever the steel magnate Carnegie Carnegie Carnegie is the is the war is the warlord there yeah and he he's a reader he reads just like Eli is a reader and all the young ones that since the 30 years since the nuclear war they don't read so these two have a skill that nobody else has right so this guy Carnegie right played by Gary Oldman Gary Oldman one of my favorite actors ever yes Gary Oldman he knows that there's he's looking for a book he knows it's going to give him power if he has this book and and all the copies were destroyed during the nuclear war so he's looking for this book and he finds out basically Milo Kunis is Jennifer Beals daughter you know Jennifer Beals is his mistress Carnegie's mistress and she's blind right and then her daughter is Solara played by Milo Kunis she Solara Solara right she she befriends this you know Carnegie wants her to go and sleep with then you know Eli so that she can get information so you know basically to get Eli on his side he wants Eli to be there to help him in this little hick town you know this wild west the wild west kind of town you know from the from the 1800s okay so he doesn't want to sleep with her but he sits her there and he says the Lord's prayer you know he says a prayer from the from from the Bible and then and then the later that day and Solana she goes in front of with her mother and she starts reciting this prayer and then Carnegie realizes that this guy Eli there's a book you know that it's from that book that he's looking for right he's looking for the book because he knows it's going to give him power right so meantime Eli is on this mission to go across the country to San Francisco we don't know yet but it's Alcatraz Island where those who are trying to resurrect the world you know the learning from before the nuclear war so he's on a mission and on the way they stop he and Solara they Solana they they stop at this house where this old couple is there Martha and George right and they offer them tea so it seems okay and then they bring out meat but Eli isn't smart enough to smell that this is human meat so he realizes their cannibals because there's no vegetable I mean in that grown any vegetables how are they eating they kill people then pack the meat right so so then they escape they have a cemetery in the backyard cemetery people they've killed they kill and you catch the telltale sign when you shake hands with somebody who is uh what do you call it who accountable uh the the hands shakes their hands shakes so it's a subtle point in the movie whenever you shake hands with somebody you have to watch out that their hand is not shaking if their hand is shaking they will be eating you exactly so that so there's all these little subtle cues that I didn't catch all of them but but so so eventually like just with yet he a lot of battles with all these gangs and stuff finally they get to he and Solana Solara they get to Alcatraz right and and this is what really bothered me about this movie right here's a guy Eli's that's being able to kill eight people at a shot and then at the end the bible it's not in in print it's in braille now how the hell can a blind man kill eight people even you don't remember Zatoichi no I don't Zatoichi when I arrived in Hawaii was all the rage and all the theaters especially the Japanese theaters and he was the blind swordsman he could kind of fly in half with his sword and he was blind same thing well so this guy was a and he he was protected right he's protected by the book and the book happens to be the bible the last bible you know and where you disagree with me we can talk about that after but I mean I'm I'm a biblical scholar I used to go to in westwood village logos the christian bookstore and read all the apocryphal texts and I know in college we took Buddhism and Hinduism and all the religions of the world Judaism so I'm sort of broader picture but I went to bookstores too when I was a kid in Greenwich Village mostly and they didn't they didn't have bible bookstores there they had other kinds of bookstores there where I grew up I tell you George sorry go ahead yeah this is westwood village in California when I moved there when I was 29 30 years old so bottom line is right next to the vegetarian restaurant at the time so bottom line is there's I have issues with the it doesn't make sense how can you have I mean you said but to me a blind man can't kill eight people I mean this Japanese samurai was he able to see eight people from being blind easily easily if he had that six cents okay but so leave it at that and you can tell me where you disagree with me okay well not with everything George but let me say let me give you my rendition of the movie okay the first the time frame the movie was actually came out in 2010 that's 12 years ago exact and it won all kinds of awards and had a lot of critical acclaim for the movie because it was so creative so unusual and so symbolic so the things that you're concerned with are their symbols they're they're not the real story this is this is really built around the dystopian world that was 30 years after an atomic blast and if you do the math it was in 2043 back 30 years would have been what 2013 yeah and they called him the walker Denzel Washington he was a walker he wasn't the only one there was a nomenclature about what he did and he didn't cross the country straight because here's the thing you might not have caught um he he went where he went in blindness yeah he was blind he was blind and there were there are there are tip-offs on that all through the movie although it's not obvious um and he went in a zigzag pattern he was walking west across the country for 30 years and he had achieved a tremendous talent in terms of self-defense in terms of um you know obtaining the food and supplies that he needed um and he would eat small animals including cats for example I don't know if he caught that part yes I could was at the beginning yeah and yeah and um you know he was he was very talented and he had this book that was given to him it was the st. james bible you only found out at the end that it was in braille um and that um you know was his mission to read it again and again and again and committed to memory which he did he found it he he found it in in rubble it wasn't given to him he he that's right and and the argument was that that was the only one left in the world exactly because the nuclear holocaust had destroyed everything including all the other copies so it was a lucky break that he had that um and maybe it was you know divine but lucky anyway uh and he learned how to handle himself alone always alone walking zigzag across the country to the to the pacific ocean to alcatraz he knew where he was going um well maybe he didn't but he he walked in in wherever it took him wherever the journey took him and he was able to cope with some really ugly people including the uh the gary uh omen character tarnage he knew that there was a bible book and he knew the power it gave and this is where i start to disagree with you um and he he wanted it because he thought it would empower him to complete his control over the community in that town he was the you know the badass guy who runs the town is what it was but don't don't don't treat it as an 18th century town it was a 22nd a 21st century town um 30 you know in the year 20 what is it 2013 2013 20 20 yeah 43 2013 and um it was just demolished it was a demolished town there was very little standing and maybe a few rooms of you know a few broken houses that was all it was many people conglomerated in a kind of unstructured way and they murdered each other on a regular basis it was um there was no society of order it was it was disordered it was chaos that came and went and that reminds you of the 18th 19th century um there was um there was you know symbols of that anyway so and as you as you reported you know at the end he reaches alcatraz he's an odd place to be mecca but there's a guy in there and he's played his his name is the michael gambon he plays george and he runs alcatraz yeah and he collects books and he's been looking for a long time for the st james bible um okay so and he and he finds it and and then so washington has been wounded up to that point he could not be wounded and he oh he was only wounded uh when he had given the bible up you know to to this badass guy yep okay so he's dying and he's he's repeating it the bible from cover to cover out of the recollection of 30 years of reading the braille yeah all right so stop there and what does this all mean aside from great acting by densel and he was you know given awards for this movie and so are some of the others um and and the screenwriters and the directors they really did very well to me it was um value in production value very very high and after a while you got into this dystopian world and try to figure out you know who this man was and how he was operating it and what motivated him and gave him this fantastic strength you know they would surround him by the dozens and he would kill them all instantly with his big knife he had um he was uh as strong as any zato ichi ever was and you find out over time that he's blind it's really a knockout but the thing the thing here and i relate it to current affairs okay is that without the bible okay without a book and um uh what's his name karneke knew this you have chaos and you rule by force you take what you want and the bible can be a a a a a a a a a a liberal ordering mechanism that allows people to live in relative security if everybody you know before the bible it was kind of a madhouse the bible arguably helped to civilize things yep uh arguably it helped to civilize europe and from europe elsewhere the bible has had more influence on human conduct in this world than any other book you know i i'm not sure that i i find that much value in it personally but and i guess you don't but but people did and it is set up systems and rules and morality that have lasted for 2 000 years yep so so without the bible in the 30 year period following the holocaust and in this dystopian horrible world of violence then take what you want um they were missing an order a system um some kind of you know social compact they were missing it there were no rules now the bible had given um at least in the first millennia after christ the bible gave rules um in the second millennia i'm not so sure uh because in one review i saw a guy said well the bible can be used either way can it and indeed um he wanted to use it to achieve his own uh agenda which was unkind uh and so you know you get that message the bible can be used to create a a liberal tolerant order kindness that decency um but it can also be used the other way and um the denzel character what's elie he he knew he knew that it was a good thing or it could be used for good and his mission was to deliver it to somebody who agreed with him and that would be george uh make that yeah george played by michael camvon no no george was was one of the cannibals no no george george was the guy who ran alcatraz alcatraz oh really yeah so uh and of course carnegie wanted the bible for his own purposes right so and what you get out of this is is a modern day comparison a modern day study i mean then this was this movie was made you know about 12 years ago of years ago of what happens when you have no social order without the bible there was no social order they both knew that they could create an order at least for a while out of the bible and so what we have here today is a world without social order and i guess if i were looking for a takeaway message from all of this is uh although the bible can cut two ways the bible is one way to deliver a system okay of social order and we need that we need the united nations we need to have collaborative instruments where we can all follow a set of moral principles and unfortunately the bible has been misused at least in the latter part of the uh well maybe maybe the whole second millennia it has been corrupted and distorted used for bad purpose but theoretically a bible or something like a bible could be used for good and i think that's really central in this in this movie i don't disagree with you on anything about karnagy you know he was going to use this for his own bad ends you know and that the bible has been you know a force for maintaining order and and decency and civility you know that's not my my issue you know um yes i agree with you completely you know i mean you know that's definitely true i mean that's not a disagreement at all i mean i don't disagree with that at all um um about what the bible has done what it you know the socially what it has done to for civility you know at least maybe in the first i think the more interesting study is the transition if you will you know you could say that uh when the romans were you know invading everything in europe you know let's do let's take gulls today we're gonna call we're gonna you know and uh we're gonna invade gull and own gull today right now which was france and you know so that that really is not a great way for people to live together it's uh it's intolerable and it's unsustainable you have to have a social order this is no you don't you don't invade the next you know village or country and take and rape and pillage you don't do that somebody has to say no and i think for a while at least in the first millennia um with you know christianity there was at least some source of strength and knowledge and and an acceptable rhetoric um that said no but somewhere along the line the church the catholic church particularly became corrupted and and acted instead to a um you know uh enhance its own power over people uh to get rich and to allow corruption all up and down the chain uh to help it in doing those things and of course the same principles exist with other large religious organizations you know hence uh in you know in our constitution there's a provision in the first amendment this separates church and state they understood this yes you've got a you know if religion were perfect uh you wouldn't need to have government would you but religion by then was clearly imperfect uh and you needed to have government by and for the people and so forth um so i think that the study really here is where the church began to lose that original ability and role at maintaining a moral social order somewhere it happened i can't tell you where george i know the albergensian crusade where there was uh in in in france you know they had a different view of christianity and they were completely they went and massacred the catholic church went in and massacred everybody you know so um he was in i mean i've read the albert the albergensian beliefs and real purity you know and the church was corrupted at that point so it definitely turned i think that was in the 1100 1200 yeah i that's why i kind of loosely divided it between the the first millennia and the second millennia and the first millennia somehow it hadn't gone so far off the edge in the second millennia say by the 12 13 14th century it had really gone off the edge and it continued it continued it was corruptible and corrupted um and you know i don't think we've spent at least in my education enough time in figuring that out and figuring out how much credibility actually do you give the church and and how much credibility do you give a government like our government that seems to be inviting control by the church as you may have seen in the rovey wade issue yes and and many others yeah i i totally agree that there's gotta be separation of church and state you know um anson chong chong i i was in touch with him before he passed away he was ahead of the separation of church and state here in hawaii he was running it so i totally agreed separation of church and state and you know from my reading you know it's not that i have a problem with what the bible is saying it's that there were so many books that were left out by the early church fathers different views from from the disciples from jesus' inner circle that that would just completely you know done away with and his family you know his his corporal family nobody talks about that so that was my problem not the made the bigger picture that you're talking about of maintaining civility so that was where my disagreement well i know you're in part um i don't disagree with your disagreement i'll tell you what i mean yeah um this the the whole thing is a mission to protect and advance this bible this st. james bible understand that and it was it was a religious connotation to it of course and some people on the religious side of the of the equation must have loved it um but the other thing is that and i'm reading from one of the reviews on on the on the on the web um this describes the whole movie a post apocalyptic tale in which a lone man fights his way across america in order to protect a sacred books that holds the secret to saving humankind and the problem with that is uh as we have discussed it yeah it could save humankind it could also destroy humankind uh and it was very uh it is now in my view very negative in in terms of saving the world but for a while it was very critical uh you know i mean very critically helpful in in in preserving order so i think it's too simplistic to say that they were all interested in this book because it could save humankind it could but it wouldn't necessarily and we have to figure out a better system yeah you have to understand jay that the directors the used brothers it's like another obama they were raised by their armenian mother uh after the dad their black dad left right the little twins they used and you know i know the armenian church is very very you know got very specific views of christianity and jesus and they were raised the youth brothers even though they're black they were probably raised in the armenian church so they've got this very you know standard view of christianity that i have pretty much you know broaden my thinking of you know and i see christianity from a bigger perspective so so you know you got to understand who these directors were they probably really devout christians you know um so you know who the who the i always look whenever i see an article who the players are who's writing the article what is their interests what is their background i always look up the author's background on wikipedia to see where they're coming from because you have to understand the person's um view worldview gestalt they call it right worldview to understand where they're coming from and these directors are very you know these two views brothers they're probably very devout christians armenian christianity is you know a certain way certain approach that a lot some of my cousins belong to so you gotta i mean that's the issue is like yes this bible has been good to civ civility but you know they they cut out a lot of other views you know and we've talked about dead sea scrolls you know i've read all the dead sea scrolls i know the bigger picture so let's leave it at that we don't have a disagreement about what this movie was all about we don't have a disagreement that the bible in the first millennia and even now is maintained civility for some but then as this roe visis versus rave thing you know um separation of church and state i totally believe in this how i you know if you look at roe v wade uh you see the imprint of the church there yeah you see the church actively campaigning against abortion that's part of its um you know that's part of its doctrine and uh it is in the politics up to its eyeballs it shouldn't be doing it you know that the conceptual deal around the first amendment was um okay we're gonna we're gonna make you exempt we're gonna give you special rights tax benefits and this and that um but you have to promise us that you're not going to get involved in government that's the nature of the deal in the first amendment about church and state but and they made that deal but the church has not tipped out of politics and right now it is it is in it is in in politics way up to its eyeballs this is a very big problem in this country and you can see what's what's happening very divisive you know i heard a program i'll i'll just tell you this very briefly on national public radio yesterday where they had an orthodox woman rabbi uh from new york actually she was South Africa and she was saying you know under the orthodox view um of abortion um it's permitted in the orthodox jewish you know doctrine is permitted um and sometimes depending on the circumstances it's required it's required under the doctrine so wait a minute uh my religion sometimes requires abortion and you're telling me that the government because of the influence of other religions would have control of the government in violation of the first amendment uh can tell me that my religion should take a flying leap and it's their religion that counts um that a woman who is required by the doctrines of her religion who have an abortion cannot have abortion because another religion has um you know hijacked the constitution and imposed its own doctrine that's really not what it's about but uh it was a very interesting discussion and i and i wonder if that will ever get anywhere and you know i have a very personal sensitivity to this because my dad's only sibling 31 she was married 19 she was born in 1910 in 1931 in the pits of the depression a married woman she decided she had she got pregnant she decided they couldn't afford a kid so she went and she had an illegal abortion and she died at 21 so and my dad's only sibling right so i never had an aunt on that side and my grandmother was devastated right so bottom line is you know there's women who are going to die because of this if Roe v Wade is gotten rid of so um separation of church and state well now that's very interesting that you raised then and it reminds me of a central point in the movie we are reviewing now you remember the nuclear holocaust of uh what 2013 right in the timeline in the movie yeah there are just a number of remarks made by some of the older older people who had been alive at the time in 19 2013 who said that the holocaust was caused by religious arguments that religion was a central point in the divisiveness that destroyed the world i don't know if you caught that but it was mentioned a couple of times and i'm saying my god these guys now i shouldn't say my god here in this context my god these these guys really understood a few things uh when they talk about religion and divisiveness and nuclear holocaust and the bible i mean it's all it's all what do you want to say very provocative and therefore worth watching the movie yes now i'm the one who suggested it to you but what rating do you give it all these things considered pretty high uh almost a 10 but i mean now that you explain to me the braille thing you know which really bothered me i'd say i would give it a 10 you know with a with a better understanding of all the factors that i missed you know because i have my own blinders on you know um from my own you know experiences so yeah i'd give it a 10 you know it there's a lot of subtle subtle things being presented here that i didn't catch that you caught yeah i remember the woman uh the i guess it was the mother and the the one uh gary oldman kept around him is played by jennifer bills yeah uh she was blind yeah blindness is a is a is a is a direct issue in this in this movie but i'll tell you why i give it a 10 yeah okay it really has nothing to do with what we've been talking about although that's very instructive of course yeah um it's the fight over the cat in the bar where he swats a cat he then sells swats a cat under the floor because it's walking on the bar and the owner of the cat who he knows to be a violent murderer comes over and picks a fight with him and it's that bar scene with that fight uh where you first see denzel doing his thing uh like zato ichi it is the most incredible fight you have ever seen i mean and they mentioned the reviewers mentioned this is one of the high points in the movie um the way they handle this i mean so on production values uh on the acting on the powerful present powerful performance of denzel washington and gary oldman and some of the others this has got to be a 10 very good perform performance actors very good acting gary denzel washington jennifer bills even said my lacuna is all very good acting i i i think it primo primo acting yeah thank you george thank you for this discussion talking about the next one soon yeah take care of you safe thank you so much for watching think tech hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on youtube and the follow button on vimeo you can also follow us on facebook instagram twitter and linkedin and donate to us at think tech hawaii dot com mahalo