Smith wimped out

Rating: 7/10 (21 January 2008)

Read the book. Despite its age it is much better. In the book Neville turns out to be the misguided villain in the end - man who didn't see how the world kept changing.
But Will Smith chickened out on playing the unwitting bad guy. Or maybe he didn't read the whole book (several hours) in favor of just watching the Heston movie with the director. The director was a terrible choice since by his own admission he loves classic (i.e. bad) zombie movies and the Heston "Omega Man" -- and wanted to make a zombie movie ("red flags" Will "red flags").
This film is instead a remake of the Charleton Heston movie which was really just zombie movie and wasn't not very good. This movie is much better but pretty much totally lacks originality. Since the book was written 40+ years ago the general viral Apocalypse theme has been ridden into the ground. Then add the restrictions of the standard Hollywood hero formula and you don't have anything that exciting.
You can actually see that they started to film this way for the movie in a couple scenes that they forgot to delete when they wimped out and made Neville a hero instead. Ask yourself who set the trap that caught Neville? Yes his mind is deteriorating some but not that much. Yup it is the infected people who are obviously not all mindless. (ooops! need clarify that Neville is really crazy or cut it for the ending of this movie) Why did the infected guy chase Neville into the daylight street? In the book this sort of stuff is the infected defending family and society from Neville though Neville doesn't figure that out. And I am pretty sure that was the original thinking for the scene when shot.
In the book Neville isn't a doctor able to search for a cure but a simple guy trying to find survivors with similar immunity or good luck. After society collapses he makes it his mission to kill off the infected during the day. But the infection mutates during the first year for the majority of infected to allow a night bound society to start to reform. They have just start to research ways medicines to shield themselves from the sun so that they can track down Neville who is sort of a daylight Dracula to them.