Hollywood ending

Rating: Null/10 (14 April 2008)

Try to conjure Manhattan as a ghost town; a vast, lonely chasm. Streets once teeming with people are now gridlocked by rusting vehicles and overrun by wild deer. Dusty skyscrapers lean toward the street like drunks, their broken windows leering like blinded eyes. There's no sound but the wind whistling through the spaces between these abandoned buildingsat least until it gets dark. Another sound grows as the sun disappearsan inhuman shrieking
Scary, no?
Such is the post-apocalyptic backdrop of "I Am Legend," the fascinating, ultimately frustrating story of a man who believes he may very well be the last person on earth, although he desperately hopes otherwise. Will Smith plays Neville, an army scientist holed up in his fortress-like home searching to cure the plague that killed off most of the world's population and turned everyone else into somethingunpleasant. The story begins 3 years after the apocalypse; Neville hasn't had any human contact in that time, and his only companion is his dog.
The first two-thirds of the film are all Smith's. He is excellentperhaps the best he's ever beenas a man driven half-crazy by loneliness amid a decaying city. His life is driven by desperation and terror and a drive to "fix" a situation beyond his control.
Pretty heavy stuffat least until the filmmakers lose their nuts and add an element unfound in Richard Matheson's ultra-bleak novel. This was a Christmas-time "tentpole" for Warner Bros. after all, so no downer endings here. We do get some pablum about faith and belief that have nothing to do with the brooding meal that was served over the previous 90 minutes. Too bad, because "I Am Legend" should have been a sci-fi classic; the watered down ending makes it a good film, but not the great one it could have been.