Eli (Denzel Washington) has been on a journey for 30 years, walking west across America after a cataclysmic war that turned the earth into a total wasteland. The world has become a lawless civilization where people must kill or be killed. The barren roads belong to gangs of cutthroats who rob and kill for water, a pair of shoes, a lighter, or just for fun. Eli is a peaceful man who only acts in self defense, and becomes a warrior with unbelievable killing skills when he is challenged. After the war and the “Big Flash”, Eli was guided by a higher power to a hidden book and given the task of protecting the book and taking it to its final destination. Eli guards the book with his life, because he knows that the book is the only hope that humanity has for its future.


Eli and Solara are rowing across the shallow waters of the Pacific Ocean to Alcatraz Island. On reaching the island, Eli tells the guards that he has an intact King James Bible. They tell him to wait where he is.
Back at Carnegie’s office in his town, an engineer is carefully trying to pick the lock on the book Carnegie wrested from Eli.
Eli and Solara are escorted onto the island where the curator, Lombardi (Malcolm McDowell) explains that the island is more than a museum– it is where he and all of his followers work to store and collect all of the knowledge, arts, and other remnants of human culture before the apocalypse, as they can, with intent to, when they are ready, share it with humanity so they can begin to re-learn all that they lost. They have collected large amounts of literature, but were missing an intact bible– until now. Eli says his bible is ‘beat up, but will do the job.’
Back at Carnegie’s office, the engineer finally manages to trigger the lock and open the book taken from Eli. Carnegie seizes it, opens it, and begins looking through the pages in disbelief, repeating over and over, ‘he can’t be’ and ‘it’s impossible.’ We see that the book is written in Braille.
Eli has Lombardi’s people bring Lombardi large stacks of paper and begins to recite the Bible from memory, having memorized it over thirty years of re-reading. As he recites, and Lombardi writes, and Solara watches in rapt fascination, the camera slowly zooms in on Eli’s face to show that his eyes clearly sustained severe damage– presumably from the super-intense bright flash of a nuclear explosion– and he stares blankly off into space. Eli was blinded in the apocalypse and has navigated his way across the continent through his other senses, honed to incredible acuteness over the past thirty years.
Carnegie has Claudia brought to his office to read the Braille bible. Claudia knows that Solara hasn’t returned and blames Carnegie. Her hands brush the pages and she realizes that Carnegie needs her to read the book because she is blind and was schooled in Braille. Feeling her sudden power over him, Claudia smiles vindictively and lies to Carnegie, saying she hasn’t read Braille in so long that she’s forgotten how. She also tells him that she can smell his leg, implying that it has become severely infected. Her hand reaches out for his face, and he leans forward to touch his forehead to her hand. Claudia tells him that he’s sacrificed so many men, so many of his guards and enforcers for the book, that all the men of the town that were afraid to speak his name have erupted into all-out anarchy and are tearing up the tavern, and that she can feel from Carnegie’s forehead that he has a bad fever. Feeling satisfaction at how close Carnegie is to something he’s fought so hard for and sacrificed so many lives for, only for it to be the same as if it were a million miles away, Claudia walks away, leaving Carnegie. He wanders out onto the balcony over the bar room of the tavern and sees everyone free-for-all looting it, taking anything they can carry and fight their way past anyone in front of them. Having lost all control over his domain, and now dying as well, Carnegie slumps against the banister in despair.
We see Eli shave his whiskers and his head and don a clean white robe. A voiceover from Eli recites what are presumably his final words, a prayer to God, as we see him continuing to recite the Bible word for word, verse for verse, to Lombardi who tirelessly writes it all down on paper, while Solara sleeps on a small sofa at the other end of the table. As Eli’s prayer continues, we see the Alcatraz printing press making a freshly prepared hardcover print copy of the completed King James Bible, and we see Solara kneeling over Eli’s grave, showing he has finally died from his injuries. She is praying silently at the grave and laying a flower there. Lombardi goes up to Solara and assures her that she has a home there on Alcatraz with he and his people if she desires, and that she will be perfectly safe among them. Solara is grateful for the offer, but she feels an obligation to do what she believes she must. Lombardi asks where she plans to go and she says simply, ‘home.’
We see Solara stepping out of the gates of the Alcatraz compound as Eli’s voiceover prayer thanks God for Solara’s friendship, and for God to watch over her as He has watched over Eli himself. We see Solara sheathe Eli’s machete over her shoulder, and plug the earphones to his iPod into her ears. Eli’s prayer thanks God for the rest he now goes to, as we see Lombardi place the completed Bible on a shelf among other religious works, including a printed copy of the Hebrew Torah and the Muslim Quran.
The movie closes with the final words of Eli’s last prayer, saying he has completed his job, won the race, and kept the faith, as we see Solara starting up Eli’s iPod, and begin walking the road on the start of her own journey… to find her mother, and spread the word of hope that Eli brought; the words of hope for mankind’s future… and shepherd them to where they can learn of the hope they almost lost.
Download The Book of Eli (2010)