Decent look, but a C+

Rating: 6/10 (16 December 2007)

An excellent movie, if you're a kid! It's even an excellent movie if you're an adult, especially a logical thinking adult, for fantasy to recollect when you were a kid.
This movie starts out great, and stays fairly decent especially with the stunning and gripping visual effects supporting the lags in common sense, and even though the logical and bibliographical explanations become apparent and try to ruin it if you let them. What it is, is a great watch for the seven dollars (fourteen for my wife and I) if you have nothing better to do.
I like Will Smith, especially for the physical portions he played in this movie. But, he does not have the portrayal characteristics of a Lt. Colonel, and especially a brilliant virologist. Samuel Jackson, or better yet Morgan Freeman however, 20 years younger and looking like they do today, would fit the bill so much better for this movie. Unfortunately, they picked Will.
The movie starts out as a typical viral Armageddon, and progressing with relapses from Will's dreams before the end of the world of what happened and what is happening three years later as the only survivor in New York City. He and his dog Sam (Samantha) hunt by day apparently for food by the run of deer and foliage that now inhabit vacant NYC. Obviously later on, this if for fun and to kill time, because of the solitude and boredom from being the only survivor in the city filled with enough canned food to supply a small army for life.
But it progresses into the typical stereotypical movie theme of "He is not alone." He hides at night with his dog in his highly renovated house from the survivors that did not die from the virus, but were mutated into flesh eating steroid enhanced super zombies. These zombies have a vampire weakness of the sun, hence all ultraviolet rays, and manifest in their darkened hives during the day. So Will is forced to reinforce his house with inside sliding guards, ultraviolet spotlights, and high explosives in case they find out where he lives. In his other time spent, he tries to find a cure for the virus for potential infected survivor if any, as well as the mutant zombies in his downstairs high tech lab.
His house is also equipped with generators to run the flood of electricity and electronics, as well as his basements high tech lab that I am sure the military did not supply him to play with before the viral storm.
One of the biggest Faux pas in the movie is where he explains the zombies are of non human nature and simply barbaric flesh eaters trying to survive. But, they trick him with an elaborate engineering and psychological ruse, along with the only communication from them with each other is only being able to shriek and howl, his physical nighttime address when a few zombies discover it. They also have their own leader zombie, and zombie attack dogs that they sic on Will and his dog, but they have no real agenda but to destroy and eat fresh meat.
The movie also has a few other clichés that ruin its chances to stand the test of time. Like the stereotypical heart wrench when his dog gets killed, the survivor that shows up and is the prophet to God's plan, when the heroine realizes he has been ignorant to that fact, and when she makes it to the survivors colony in what I believe was the hills of New Hampshire, and everyone is happy and will survive and repopulate the earth with Christianity in mind. (From all of this being a lesson of what happened to Sodom and Gomorra, can easily happen again)
Here are some of the other bumbling mistakes that the writers, producers, and directors failed to think about.
After 3 years, all petroleum products such as combustible gasoline and diesel go stale and turn to oily products and fail to burn efficiently in vehicles. (I.E, Will or anyone else driving any vehicle.)
Zombies with no hair and no apparent intellect (except what was stated before) that live in vacant dark buildings, will eventually freeze to death in NYC the first winter it drops to 20 degrees, no matter how much food they may have. It gets even colder than that in NYC, and especially without clothes, they will freeze like a cube no matter what their metabolism is.
Escaped lionesses and lions, or anything like that from the zoo from tropical countries such as Africa, will not survive the winters outside, or even in vacant buildings, as stated before no matter how much food they may find. Their bodies were not evolved to that type of cold like other North American and high altitude animals.
Fresh fruit such as pears and oranges (maybe they where the fake ones) on Will's table after three years of living in NYC alone. Fruit such as these are not indigenous, and will not grow like the corn he is shown picking in the fields, that are also nicely planted in straight rows and also in huge fields with a tractor, pro farming equipment, and farm boy training can only do.
Army personnel in the beginning that are evacuating certain high rank personnel and families, do not, will not, and cannot override the President of the United States decision of a FULL QUARANTINE.
SR-22 Blackbirds such as the one Will was knocking golf balls off of, are not placed, and are not launched from aircraft carriers. They also, even if they where transported on them, would not be on the launch deck in full view, especially with a variety of cluttered aircraft around it; especially in NYC harbor.
No Asians, in NYC?