A Will Smith you've never seen before and a movie that offers more than the poster and trailer may suggest

Rating: Null/10 (18 December 2007)

The remarkable thing about this movie is its simplicity. The movie makers seem to have taken a lot of effort to make it painfully predictable, e.g. the eventual fate of the faithful dog Samantha. The reason, I surmise, is to allow you to think a little and to let Will Smith act more.
Those who have watched "28 days later" will see this movie almost as a re-visit: a virus that turns humans into hordes of blood sucking zombies, a desperate struggle to find a cure and a haven where the few uncontaminated are holding on to a last glimpse of hope.
The opening sees Will Smith and the dog, as perhaps the only unaffected among the respective human and canine species, out on a regular hunting day in post-apocalyptic Manhattan. In an attentively crafted scene, we see man and dog zeroing in on their prey, but as he is just about to fire, a lioness from out of nowhere bounces onto the deer and pins it down. As you fully expect the simple solution of shooting both, you see the lion and cub appear on the scene. As the scene ends, you are left to ponder what is on this last normal human being's (at least to what he thinks) mind that makes him spare this lion family.
The first half of the movie is the more watchable (although the second half us not UNwatchable, only becoming more run-of-the-mill), reminding you inevitably of Tom Hank's "Cast away" (2000). Smith however has an easier job because while he still has a dog to talk to, Hanks only had a volleyball with a face drawn on it. On the other hand, while Hanks' character still has hopes of being rescued with everything back to normal, the doctor in "I am legend" is actually quite convinced that everybody is dead and what is left is just zombies (but hell, such fast-moving ones). On a rational plane, his persistent research is in hope of finding a cure to turn these ghouls back into normal human beings. But you can't help but wonder: does he really believe in this hope himself, or is he doing this merely to keep his sanity?
As I said, by not clustering this movie with useless complications, the movie makers allow the audience the space to contemplate the magnitude of this loneliness. A Will Smith that you have not seen before has given a good shot at making this loneliness palpable. As we move beyond the first half of the movie and other characters appear, it becomes a more commonplace horror thriller and self-sacrificing hero yarn. Still, taken in its entirety, this is a movie worth watching.
Deserving mention is a cameo, uncredited appearance of Emma Thompson at the beginning, sort of a prologues of an interview with a doctor who has purportedly discovered a cure for cancer, a discovery that eventually turns into the catastrophic virus - a chilling message that scientific advancements may one day have serious repercussions.