A potentially quality film that was simply cut too short

Rating: 8/10 (25 December 2007)

My biggest problem with this film is that the whole protagonist-antagonist relationship was simplified to the point of "de-constructing" the movie back to the drawing board/outline stages. The book gave both sides a much more complex twist, and really made the reader question the true "hero" and "villain" of the story, whereas the film did not. Neville was pure good, and the Dark Seekers were pure evil. If this story had been an epic, then it might have worked, but in this case... not very fun in my opinion.
With that said, I am convinced that Will Smith is one of the most versatile actors in Hollywood right now. I've always viewed him as the doofus from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, but in recent years, he's really diversified his roles so kudos to him. As for the movie, the first 80% of it was great, but the whole film was just a long (albeit great) build-up that never got paid off. There was no sense of closure - instead we get a rushed ending because the producer probably wanted to keep the running time down so as to squeeze out an extra showing or two per day to make more cash. I am pretty sure that the writer had nothing to do with this, as the quality of the beginning drastically contrasted that of the ending - a telltale sign of production constraints and not bad storytelling.
I give it a solid 6.5/10, but it could have done so much better given the budget and the star power.