IMAX did it for me

Rating: 4/10 (30 December 2007)

This is not my usual genre; had it been a choice on HBO I would probably have passed it up. But this was my first IMAX experience, and you just can't help but be drawn into a film with a great actor whose emotions measure 25 feet on the screen. Smith's acting is brilliant, a heartbreaking interpretation of solitude and menace, his beloved (and beautiful) dog his only light in a nightmare. The flashbacks which outline the events leading up to this condition are lean and well-placed. However, I felt an extreme lack of balance once the woman and her son were introduced. After Smith spent most of the film drawing us into his lonely world, there is a surprising lack of character development in the two survivors he finally finds. The viewer is champing at the bit for their story but all we get is a quick narrative from the mother and nothing at all from her son as far as his perspective when suddenly we are mid mega-crisis and on our way onto the end of the movie. It was the IMAX that did it for me, and the eerie set.