Eli (Denzel Washington), an expert hand-to-hand combatant nomad, is on a quest possessing the only copy of the bible believed to be left in the world, trudging over country suffering from an apocalyptic war 30 years previous and a "flash” caused by the sun that has burned virtually all of the landscape. Things go bad for our hero when he wanders into a town run by Carnegie (Gary Oldman) – a man persistently looking for a copy of the bible in order to use its words to manufacture a new population complete with blind faith.