Will Smith was Fantastic but the film fell short ****Possible Spoilers****

Rating: 7/10 (2 January 2008)

I've got to be honest I am pretty stunned that Will Smith pulled off this character so well. Long gone it seems are the days of Mike Lowrey in Bad Boys. He played the part so well his dedication to simply continue trying to save the world in an almost impossible situation.
The way he played the character very well gone was what I expected to be the gun ho type character we often see from Smith, Even though he was a Doctor in the Army these guys tend to have amazing weapons skills, The first scene where we are introduced to the Hive showed this rather than his usual character Smith was racked with fear and self doubt but also determined to hang onto his one and only friend in the world.
Later when he finally makes contact with Humans you can see his social behaviour is out the Window and once again this is done to a tee as are his interactions with the dummies in the Video Store.
However the Film has be done before, time and time again and it has been done better, so much so that Smith and the dog Sam are it's only saving grace. The opening scene in New York although dramatic and haunting has been done already in 28 days later but this was the real London shown in this movie where as huge parts of Legend are CGI. The only part of the film where the Zombies are remotely scary is that first scene with the Hive and this is more down to the empathy we feel for Smiths Character rather than the Zombies them selves. Once again see 28 days later rather than totally mutating the humans it gave them a similar virus and similar symptoms but they remained more human and much scarier where as the CGI rendered Zombies looked so fake that I just didn't care after the second scene when Smith captures one of them. As soon as the film turned to an action sequence in the end we lost the thoughtful part of the film. I thin kthe average score for this film on the site is probably about fair, but at the same time I think a lot of the high ratings are more down to Smiths performance which as I said I am genuinely shocked with rather than the actual story line or the rest of the film itself.