Falls rather flat......

Rating: 5/10 (12 March 2008)

This movie was quite trumpeted in the press when in first came out in theaters, and Will Smith duly obliged by appearing on every single show and radio station promoting the movie, hyping it up. After all that, and the promise it held, it's a rather underwhelming experience.
The production history of this movie is a legend unto itself, having a version of the story made in the 70's, and 3 attempts at a more faithful to the book version since then, so you would imagine that would mean that there was an interesting story to be told here. Now, I haven't read the book, so I don't know how it is, but going by this movie, I can't see why there was such a keenness to get it made.
Will Smith plays Robert, a Lt, Corporal something or other who somehow has participated in producing a vaccine for cancer, which inadvertently goes wrong and kills 90% of the worlds population. Of the remaining population, 9% get turned into "dark runners" vampires/zombies for all intents and purposes who only come out at night, and the remaining 1% are their food. Will's character is stranded in New York City, after it was quarantined and he sent his family off to a safe haven and stayed behind so he could find a cure for the vaccine "as NY is ground zero". After 2 years of living with just his dog on the island, only going out during the day, he is yet to find a cure for the "dark runners".
The opening 30 mins follows Will during his daily routines, hunting for food, searching buildings for survivors/supplies, working on his vaccine etc. It works for while, but the problem with just having Will and a dog is that there's not much going on, we get flashbacks to the night of the quarantine from time to time and what happened that night, but it's not enough to engage you, so you have to rely on Will being interesting, and unfortunately he's not. Some actors can act and tell a story with their facial expressions alone, and this is what was needed in this movie with such little dialog, but I'm afraid this doesn't seem to be Will's strength as an actor, and it leaves you begging for some action/drama to allow some more scope.
Unfortunately, there are few action scenes (3 in the whole movie), and these are also very underwhelming. If the dark runners are supposed to be human, then why are they completely computer generated? And why were they poorly computer generated at that? You don't fear them at all, you just keeping saying "Hey, that's really bad effects".
About an hour in some fellow survivors arrive on the scene, and you hope the story picks up, but unfortunately it doesn't. The scenes feel contrived and cliché, with Will struggling to adapt to company, let alone a female and a child who remind him of the family he lost, and his acting in these scenes, especially the breakfast scene when he's trying to control his emotions, seems very forced and over acted.
When the dark runners finally find his hide out and invade, you hope for a grandeur ending, but it doesn't materialize, it's quite quick and not very action packed.
Overall, this movie is very at odds with itself. It's not the actioner you might expect it to be, it's not the horror/scary movie you might expect it to be, and it's not a strong performance by Will Smith, which is a shame, because I like a lot of it's work. It's really a hyped up version of 28 weeks later, with a bigger budget but less thrills, less action, and a poorer script, and you feel rather flat having watched it.