Loved it

Rating: 8/10 (26 December 2007)

A good look at a man-made apocalypse situation.
My one complaint is that I found the scientific accuracy to be uneven. From the very beginning it was dubious with Emma Thomson's cameo as the scientist who genetically modified a common virus and produced what she thought would be the cure for cancer. The cameo is a news program interview, which, of course, features an everyday analogy for the benefit of lay audiences, however, I found myself saying out loud "that comparison made absolutely no sense!" One thing which bugged me was that the main character Robert Neville seemed firmly convinced that the "Dark Seekers" were not at all human anymore, but it was clear that they were still displaying human intelligence when they copied the design of a trap he used to capture one of them. It was also unrealistic in that they seemed to have super human agility, because, while obvious that the Dark Seekers' metabolic rate is much faster, they're still in human bodies. Although, I'm willing to forgive that because I'm well aware that much accuracy is a bit too much to expect from Hollywood.
What I liked most was the thoughtful details which are not explicitly stated, some of which you might actually miss the first time you see the movie. The main one is the vacant New York City, the trees and grass growing over aged Christmas decorations and Broadway billboards. It's incredibly sad because it's a reminder that everyone is dead, and yet there's so much green and you can hear birds singing so in a way it's more beautiful than the real New York City is. Another one is in later scenes when you realize that the paintings in Neville's livingroom are, not only classics by artists such as Tousseau and Van Gogh, but are actually the originals (which he presumably salvaged from one of the NY museums). This fact, however, is never discussed or even really noticed by any of the characters.
The power of the film is, of course, Will Smith's performance. He brings emotional drama as well as comic relief due to the fact that his character is a little nutty (though after watching all of NYC die and spending 3 years alone, who could blame him?). He ends up being somewhat of a Christ figure, but he's a very flawed character. During the flashbacks as well as the later scenes when two other survivors finally find him, he seems overly stubborn and his quest to cure the disease more like a personal obsession than a noble aspiration to save humanity. In the end you find that you'd rather be there with him in the middle of the city, instead of in the pastoral "survivors community" that is revealed at the very end.