Omega Man meets 28 Days Later

Rating: 6/10 (1 January 2008)

Let me say first that I am a huge fan of Will Smith, and I think that he did a great job in this movie. It's always a pleasure to watch him work. A fine actor at the top of his game. But I suspect that if you put Casey Afleck as the lead in this one, it doesn't gross 30 million in the complete run.
Hollywood appears to have given up on actors all together, and is moving into complete CGI characters for no reason at all. The main "villian" is a CGI character only categorized as a "monster." As are the rest of the villains. Impossible to develop, and used only for cheap theatrics (leaping up buildings, really?).
Backdrop: The human population is decimated by a man-made plague that wipes out most of the world in one fell swoop. The remainder are mostly flesh eating creatures, and there are a few survivors who, for some reason, are immune to the virus. For some unexplained reason, Smith is trying to cure the effects of the virus. What is lost, unexplained, or simply not thought of, is the why? The bad guys are never developed as sympathetic victims in need of cure. Thye are just monsters to be avoided or shot. Even that is underdeveloped.
Huge plot holes exist in the story, around nearly every corner. The villains are monsters who have lost the ability to reason, but can work together in groups to construct (unnecessarily) elaborate traps? It reminded me of an old Bond film.
Spoiler here: and why exactly did Smith not just get into the duct work with the woman and child? Apparently his (must have been nuclear) hand grenade was going to blow up the entire building, so what was he sticking around for? Apparently it was safe in the basement fire/duct work....with some sort of escape route too...
The whole film seems like a bad combination of Heston's Omega Man and 28 Days Later - both films that were actually better than this one. At least in Omega Man, they attempted to develop their mutants (cheesy lines and bad makeup, but they gave it a shot).
Once again, a Hollywood blockbuster based on pretty backdrops, heavy CGI graphics, and lots of things blowing up.
It's a good rental if you're in the Hollywood mood, but you'll be left with more questions at the end like, "did you think that one part (those seven parts) even made sense?" Ultimately, I believe that this movie, for all the cash that it is making, will be shelved as junk cinema. There are good action/drama high-dollar movies out there, but this isn't one of them.