So much good work in such a poor final product

Rating: 4/10 (5 January 2008)

This was the most frustrating kind of movie for me to watch, because I really wanted to like it, and every time I came close there would be a terrific clinker of some kind to completely pull my head out of the film. Mostly the clinkers had to do with setting up the circumstance that Manhattan had been physically isolated from its surroundings. Indeed, we see the destruction of the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, and it's safe to assume the other bridges and the tunnels would have been destroyed as well.
Okay - Manhattan is cut off from Jersey, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. We are told that Manhattan was "ground zero" for the outbreak and was quarantined, after which most of its population became infected. Yet somehow it is infested with deer - lots of deer. Doubtful, but, I suppose, possible. We'll give you the deer. Then there are the lions who hunt the deer. Not good old American cougar, but African lions. How the hell did THEY get to Manhattan? On the A train? Last time I went to Central Park Zoo, there were no lions. Polar bears, yes. Lions, no. Oh, back to the deer for a moment. One of them, being hunted for dinner by Neville, does something pretty peculiar. Instead of continuing to flee down the street in the middle of the day, this particular deer runs into a multi-story building that is completely dark and manages, presumably at full-speed and on hooves that miraculously have the traction of sneakers, to successfully negotiate pitch-black hallways and stairs, and in total silence. Neville, on the other hand, has to turn on his flashlight as soon as he enters said building, and then proceed slowly and carefully through the halls and up the stairs.
Then there is Alice Braga's character, who drives to Manhattan from Maryland. How the hell does SHE get onto Manhattan if the bridges and tunnels are gone? And, according to her, she waited all day for Neville at the South Street Seaport, yet somehow managed to miss his setting up his ambush for the "dark-seekers".
This is just sloppy writing, backed up by a director who thinks his audience is stupid enough not to notice.
There's more, having to do with the survivors' colony in Vermont that Neville somehow is not aware of, even though he is the most tuned-in guy on the planet.
Rent "The Omega Man" if you just have to see a movie version of this. Otherwise, just read it. You'll save some money and get a lot more out of it.