Should have known better...

Rating: 4/10 (4 May 2009)

Let's start with confessing that I was rather reluctant to the the idea of watching a film where Will Smith roams the street of Manhattan all by himself armed with a gun... but in the end, I had read enough enthusiastic comments so I decided to give it a try - which afterwards only confirmed my suspicions.
The main problem with this film is that it does not define itself as a pure fantasy/horror genre but tries instead way too hard to create references to real life: scientist announcing cure for cancer, the year being clearly defined, New York scenery, Bob Marley, Shrek etc. OK, this kind of mixing everyday life reality and absolute fiction worked just fine for comedies e.g. "Ghostbusters" or "Back to the future" but here it just made me roll my eyes with disbelief. We have to assume that somehow the above cancer medicine was simply injected into millions of people all over the world without even being tested appropriately and then - oops, it turns out that it actually kills people or turns them into monsters?!!? This not being preposterous enough, we are to believe that the virus spreads way too fast so it can kill everyone including the government (which would have been isolated right away), the Pentagon (same as the government), remote communities etc. It is also not quite clear how the streets are jammed with cars but there is not even a trace of rotting bodies... I guess this was also some kind of flesh, bone and clothes eating virus that made everything disappear neatly:) Anyhow, apart from driving his SUV and shooting deer Will Smith has to hide from the mutants which obviously are debilitated enough so they can only roar and make evil grimaces - in terms of communication. Other than that, they also resemble vampires i.e. start falling apart if exposed to direct sunlight - umm, ooh-kay... this is where it started getting a bit too much for me. Of course there are also vampire dogs (!!) which means that the virus somehow spread among animals too but did not harm the deer, the lions etc. By the way, the vampires/mutants do not seem to harm them either, obviously being vegetarian - which must be a good thing since they are able to jump and climb buildings with the agility of orangutans.
To tie up this story, there is a woman with a kid showing up at the right place and at the right time (talk about deus ex machina) as she apparently was the only one to hear Will Smith's radio messages... And then, towards the end of the movie, we see military personnel which for a strange reason failed to hear those messages and no one bothers to hint why!! Moderatly entertaining movie which will require you to suspend any logic to enjoy it.