rated R

It’s only fair when looking at a movie so dripping in the influence of Sergio Leone to apply the simple standards of il buono, il brutto and il cattivo.

So, the Good: In throwing every imaginable genre convention at the wall, something is bound to stick, and “The Book of Eli” succeeds in many ways (if sticking to a wall can be qualified as criteria for success). The good Brothers Hughes, having demonstrated some fairly sophisticated taste in comic booky diversions with their underrated adaptation of Alan Moore’s “From Hell,” pull out all the stops to illustrate their vision of a lone preacher in a desolate wasteland, defending the downtrodden and generally doing unto others, mostly for worse than for better, as they would do unto him. The visuals, all initially storyboarded by veteran comic book artists and filmed with a dusty, bleached out severity by Don Burgess (“Forest Gump,” “Spiderman” and “Terminator 3”), are textured, sunburned and spectacular in every way a good pockeclipse should be. Give us a few more years, these images say, and we’ll surely turn our sky to lead, our rivers to sand and what passes as civilization to a crumbling echo.

Also Good: the cast, for the most part, is impenetrable (with one exception, see: Bad). Gary Oldman can disappear into just about any character he wants to, but he’s an impeccable fit for an Al Swearengin’s coat. Though retreating once or twice into his “screaming instead of acting” thing, he manages to completely nail the role of an uncontested Bartertown despot ready to scorch the Earth for the better of his community. The supporting players—proving that there are no small parts, just small actors—are also superlative. Ray Stephenson (“Rome”), possibly doomed by his one leading-man role in the disheartening “The Punisher” (not his fault!), makes a positively compelling and sympathetic second-banana thug. Against all odds, Michael Gambon (Dumbledore!) apparently is something of a surgeon with automatic weapons. If you blink, you might miss Tom Waits. But, hell, it’s Tom Waits…don’t blink. But enough about the support crew, who’s really in charge of this movie? Well, Denzel Washington.

Remember when Jules in “Pulp Fiction” stated his new mission to just walk the Earth, “Like Kane in Kung Fu”? Turns out, Washington, as the man-with-almost-no-name, Eli, is the delivery on that promise. Though not popularly known for playing badass muthafuckas, it bears note that that’s exactly what got him his Oscar (“Training Day”). Here, like Jules, he quotes nimbly from the scriptures before unleashing God’s own wrath on those who would oppose him. Washington trained with Don Insanto—a Bruce Lee protégé who famously invented Matt Damon’s signature Bourne-Fu—in order to do all his own fist work for the film. Unlike the filming of the “Bournes,” the Hugheses filmed the action at a distance, in single shots, allowing for an appreciation of the head-spinning shit this guy’s capable of.

Which brings us to the Bad.

At what abandoned truck stop on his highway to nowhere did Eli pick up all this baddassery? The efficiency with which he slices justice through the throats of his enemies is a little past preposterous, and serves only to diminish what otherwise could have possibly been a believable character. There are a good number of other fissures in the plot, too. It’s mostly little things. But why, traveling constantly west, as he says he’s been, even on foot, has it taken this man 30 years to not quite make it to the Pacific? How is it that a quarter of a century after running water became a memory, he can still lull himself to sleep listening to Al Green on a perfectly functional iPod? Where do his bow and arrows disappear to when he’s not hunting cats and vultures and heathen scum? In what reality, even an illiterate, half starved one like this, does it make sense to put a knee bandage on the outside of the pants? The mind boggles. Forgiving the survival of a point blank slug to the gut (in movie terms, it wouldn’t have even slowed down Schwarzenegger), why is he rowing across San Francisco Bay—after taking a bullet—while his perfectly capable sidekick (Mila Kunis) just sits and watches from the back of the boat?

Alright, enough of the Bad, except to point out that Mila Kunis, though inexplicably still cute as a button in this horrid misogynist hellhole where all women have been reduced to handmaidens and whores, exists in this movie for the sole purpose of asking questions and making observations on the audience’s behalf. There’s every chance that we could have figured out that the old Victorian house in the middle of a desert was suspicious without her there to tell us, “This is weird.” Mila, please, talk to your agent.

And finally, the Ugly (and remember, Ugly is not always a bad thing): starting with the soundtrack. Completely supporting the emotional states on screen, both heroes and enemies alike, and often disintegrating into positively bestial whines and rumbles and screeches like the thrumming of a whale in shock, it feels more like sound effects than orchestrated music. A bold and ungodly noise. There’s little probability that anyone will be lulling themselves to sleep with this dissonance on their iPod in 30 years, but ugly as it was, it worked like Leone magic.

One could expect that a cinematic recipe combining a Mad Max wasteland with Clint Eastwood shootouts, Zatoichi style swordplay and pretty much the whole plot of “Zardoz” would make a pretty workable “thinking meathead’s movie.” And the saddest ugliness of “The Book of Eli” is that it does. But it never rises above in any modern way to resonate about seeking truth in simplicity, the value of the sacred and the power of faith as the Hugheses so clearly hoped it could. As much as they may have tried to avoid it, they hopelessly corrupt their own message with their great skill at violence, and ruin the violence with the truth of their own message. Seeing, it turns out, is a very different thing than believing.