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In The Book of Eli, after Eli (Denzel Washington) has shot most of Carnegie's (Gary Oldman) henchmen and Redridge (Ray Stevenson) has already missed killing him twice, Eli and Redridge are facing each other in the street. We hear a baby crying in the background and Redridge lifts his pistol to make a third shot, but then slightly tilts his head and doesn't fire. Eli turns around and walks off.

Eli is a careful survivor; he is blind, yet survives many firefights, both in the past and the present. He has honed his hearing to allow him (with echo-location clicking of his tongue when needed) to be able to tell where a shooter is, he knows approximately how many men he's against. He seems to hesitate at the end, "looking" at Redridge even, yet does not shoot. It's quite possible, however, that Eli lost track of Redridge's location in the shooting, or is out of loaded ammunition, but for whatever reason he does not take the final kill shot at Redridge. Why doesn't Redridge take a carefully aimed shot at Eli, now that he is remaining still?

I'm not asking for opinions, I'm curious if a reason is given in the script, or in any director's cuts or DVD extras/interviews.

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  • My reading of that scene was that after the 2nd shot hit Eli and he didn't drop, Redridge credited him with supernatural protection and decided not to mess with that given how it had gone against every other henchman that had tried to attack Eli.
    – Andrew Thompson
    Mar 24, 2016 at 23:33

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My best answer to this is that Redridge did not take that shot to kill Eli after the first shoot out because he knew that Carnegie had control over Solara (Mika Kunis) and he figured that he could use this as a bargaining chip to get Solara as promised by Carnegie that was proposed by Redridge soon after the first fire fight.

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    – John
    Nov 21, 2016 at 5:16

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