OK in parts

Rating: 5/10 (24 December 2007)

This movie is OK in parts. The idea (plot) had so much potential, and quite frankly I don't think it lived up to the hype, and I think in the hands of a better director and with a better script it would have been a fantastic movie. At times, the movie was unsure of itself and did not really know what type of movie it wanted to be. It seemed to me that it was trying to please too many people. Under one guise it was aiming for the popcorn eating shoot em up fan and at the same time desperately trying to be an art type film, hoping to evoke emotions. It doesn't pull off either. There are good moments, but they are few and far between. If you've seen the trailers and read some of the reviews then you should already have a broad idea of what its about. If you go in expecting action etc, then there is some, but perhaps just not enough, maybe just enough to whet your appetite, but by that stage the movies winding up. There are one or two tense moments, but they were few and far between despite the fact that there was potential for far more.
The appearance of the woman and the kid at the end could have been better orchestrated, even if it meant deviating far too much from the original story, (what the hell - they have done so in many other parts so that it was supposed to make a better "movie")
Will smith turns in a decent performance. Having said that i really think will smith (for me anyway) is too typecast as an action star to be a nerdy scientist and perhaps we would have been better served if they concentrated on that part of the movie, and the Dark Seekers, as it was clear as he began to encounter them, that they were becoming more and more cunning, calculating. It would have been difficult to concentrate on the emotions, when there was no one to bounce dialogue off especially since he is supposed to be all alone. There is only so much you can do with flashback.
All in all, OK, worth watching but nothing spectacular.