This is clearly a work designed for some sort of religious (or anti-religious) paranoid audience, but I can't figure out at which end (so it may be a work intended to appeal to both). At the end of the Great War (during which the ozone layer went away briefly and so most folk over thirty have fried retinas) , the conflict was blamed on the Bible (fantasy left) and all copies of it (at least the (N)KJV) were destroyed (right). But some know that the Bible holds the key to the new civilization (right), but think this is because its words have the power to control mankind in a totalitarian state(left).
In to the desolate world thirty years after the war -- a world whose desolation is revealed in the best use ever of a Sphinx cat, as bleak and barren and yet as hope for tomorrow('s lunch) -- come a lone figure walking on a thirty year trek ever westward from Atlanta to a haven and embryonic New World to which a voice directs him and his precious cargo. Although his progress of less than a hundred miles a year seems slow -- even accounting for time spent getting revenge meals for rats and learning the choreography of silhouette cinema knife fights with an Arkansas toothpick punched out to look like an African ceremonial dagger (which he carries Wesley Snipes fashion), he seems driven to complete his task as soon as possible. And he does get the last several years' worth of travel in in this movie (in a car yet).
He is not a White Messiah (that's Avatar); he is Denzel Washington and he is just carrying a message, or even the carrier of a message. He knows the message he carries and that it is the hope of the future, but he (with deep retrospective regrets) cannot complete his journey if he lives by that message: he must destroy all that stand in the way of his mission (I think this is right, but then I see a lot of it on the left, too) nor can he turn aside to help others beside the way (though, happily, the case of this we see gets "rectified" since the perpetrators of the outrage later get in his way as well -- no help to the raped and slaughtered, of course). He can barely turn aside for food and water, so certainly he will not fall to the blandishments of the power mad (left) or of pretty or lonely or even sympathetic women (right?). And when he achieves his goal (gasping his last in the process), it becomes a new book from the revived printing industry, to go along side the Encyclopedia Britanica (missing a few volumes). (just cynical -- so left?)
I'm sure we are meant to find a moral here, as an excuse for the (hardly gratuitous -- it is the point, after all) violence. Preserving the basic text of Christianity is more important that living Christianity? (right) Living Christianity is no longer possible in the dog eat dog world to come?(left) It is noble to be fixated on a task and carry on against all obstacles and temptations, however doing so contradicts one's original motivation? The movie is a flop as a fable or allegory or whatever extra-meaning vehicle you choose. It barely makes it as a slasher flick, except a for a little physical misogyny and the shadow-puppet fights.
And it wastes (in a variety of senses of the word) Michael Gambon and Frances de la Torre.
Aside from the likelihood of its putting most churches out of business, I would like to start a movement to prohibit the use of Christian themes and plots without actually carrying Christ's message. This movie is a good place to start.
