The Book of Eli: R: brutal violence, language; 1:58; $ $ $ $ (out of $5)

OK, I’ll admit it. If “The Road,” one of my favorite films of 2009, hadn’t traveled to places equally bleak, I really might have been blown away by “The Book of Eli,” a more action-packed, though surprisingly spiritual rendering of post-apocalyptic America.

As it is, the sepia-toned images fashioned by ever-growing directing brothers Albert and Allen Hughes (“Menace II Society”) still very much kick-start a new year of cinema. Think “Mad Max” meets a Bible thumper in perhaps HBO’s “Deadwood,” with a great twist at the end bolstered by capable performances from Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman and even Mila Kunis.

Washington, of course, is Eli, a peace-loving believer and survivor who can wreak havoc on small gangs of marauders when he needs to in a now-lawless society. That occurs very early on in a nimbly choreographed piece of martial-arts mayhem, shown in silhouette under a bridge.

The ever intense warrior — walking through mass destruction and under an always hot sun toward some kind of reckoning — finds a few moments of peace after singlehandedly emptying a bar room filled with cretins.

The town where he stops is run by a smart but evil tyrant named Carnegie (Oldman), who has designs on using the secrets in the book Eli always carries to rule an even bigger society. Naturally, the heroic title character won’t give anything up without a fight, and Carnegie’s stepdaughter (Kunis) gets to pick sides in the ultimate showdown.

She’s also part of that effective ending that could possibly portend a sequel to this graphic novel-like telling of a nasty futuristic tale with a somewhat hopeful Old West spin.