Will Smith Takes On Armageddon

Rating: 7/10 (22 December 2007)

Will Smith has proved to be one of Hollywood's most influential and intelligent celebrities and can easily be seen as a role model without much hesitation. Using his everyman persona by just being himself and using his ambitions and morals to work for him and asking others to heed his advice. Will Smith projects that persona on most of his screen characters to create influential, lovable protagonist characters and he has carried out the out the same attitude in real life. This film has Smith continuing in the Action Scifi genre, a genre wheres he has been most marketable and commercially successful for over decade while receiving critical praise. With films like Independence Day and Men In Black, Will Smith became the Nineties most marketable and commercially successful Summer Movie star. Its great to have Will Smith continue in this genre because his everyman persona provides great depth for a struggling protagonist in an Action Scifi setting.
The film is based on the 1954 novel of the same name drawing influences from other post-apocalyptic films such as Vincent Prices 1964 film The Last Man on Earth and 1971's The Omega Man. This is a modernized update of the classic Armageddon story plot as it is inevitable that most Hollywood films of any theme or genre are updated to have modernized contemporary film elements. Will Smith's modern day persona blends in with the idea of the film. The Film runs slow for the first hour and is inconsistent with few surprises. The first half of the film is Smith's character and his dog Samantha traveling through the desolate city then when the film is 7/10ths of the way done we meet up with the supporting actress Anna Braga.
The Film starts in the near future Manhattan 2012 three years prior to that a doctor by name of Dr. Alice Krippin (Emma Thompson) is convinced that she has a cure for cancer by genetically bioengineering the measles virus. This cure mutates with absolutely disastrous consequences as the new virus spreads throughout the world killing 98 percent of humanity and causing some survivors to devolve into flesh eating monsters that come out only at night.
Prior to this Armageddon he was a famous well renowned Military virologist who dedicated his life to reversing the infectious virus started by Dr. Krippin which he continues to do after it wiped out nearly all of humanity. By the end of 2009 the disease spreads so quickly that 90% of the world and presumably Dr. Krippin are dead. Dr.Neville is convinced that it is not the end of humanity and attempts to contact anyone in the world by broadcasting on all AM Radio frequencies asking anyone listening to meet him at the city pier during mid day afternoon. For the first half of the film he wanders around the desolate city and hunts down the humans who have been transformed from the disease and studies them to find a cure this includes animals that have been infected as well. He uses traps to capture the infected creatures then putting them through numerous tests to see if he can come to a conclusion and have a cure to reverse this whole disaster. One of his infected test subjects is 18 - 20 year old girl who he attempts to treat without success.
While doing all this there are flashbacks. While he goes to sleep to periodically in three separate dreams infer what actually happened prior to this desolate future putting into detail what has happened during the apocalypse for humanity. Basically Neville's and his families escape from the city during the break out of the infection and how it was spreading and their struggles to leave and how Dr.Neville has started to begin finding a cure. The flashbacks are separated periodically as to when Will Smith is sleeping. The last dream basically shows the military solution by bombing Manhattan and how his family tries to escape in one of the helicopter's and how it collides with one of theirs. The only family he has left is his dog Samantha who is basically killed off as well because she didn't heed Neville's command of running away from the mutated canines and humans when they had the chance. Smith than takes his anger out on the infected humans by using his car to ram over them driving aimlessly onto the pier than crashing into a lamp post, where the mutated humans take this as an advantage. As it looks like the protagonists life draws near he is saved by a group of survivors Anna (Alice Braga) and a kid named Ethan who were waiting at the city pier in response to his radio AM message.
Returning them to his house she explains that there is a human colony in Vermont which Neville doesn't believe it and goes into denial mainly because he was convinced that the infection had wiped out all of humanity and that him and Anna and Ethan where the earths sole survivors. After this the most of the cities infected humans come and attack the homestead realizing that Neville is a threat in response to this Neville and Anna retreat to the basement where Neville finds himself at a dead end letting Anna and Ethan escape through the coal chute. During all of this Neville discovers that his testing on that 18 - 20 year old patient produced a cure that he hands over to Anna and spread to any of the infected humans. During all of this Neville sacrifices himself by killing him and all the other infected humans off with a grenade.
Will Smiths take on the character is original in the way of how he expresses himself take for example how he uses Bob Marley as a distressful way of thinking of positives and at how any dark moment can be changed into a positive. Will Smith continues to be a great role model through films.