January 9, 2008 -- Will Smith stars in this fourth adaptation of the 1954 Richard Matheson book of the same name, two others being “The Last Man on Earth,” (1964) starring Vincent Price and “The Omega Man” (1971) starring Charleton Heston. This is a much slicker, big budget adaptation of the story. A lot of computer-generated animation is used in the film and it is distracting at times.

The acting by Smith is excellent as he plays Robert Neville, a scientist who is slowly going crazy as the last uninfected human being in New York City. A plague has wiped out about 90 percent of the human race. The remainder are immune to the virus, or have been transformed by the virus into superhuman murderous monsters. The plague is caused by a cancer cure gone terribly wrong. Neville is convinced there is a cure for the plague and that, being immune, his blood is a key to the cure. Events leading up to the evacuation of New York City and some of Neville's background are revealed in flashbacks

With a dog as his only companion, Neville roams the streets of New York alone, visiting a video store staffed by mannequins as he slowly works his way through every video in the store. He collects gas from abandoned gas stations to feed the generators that provide his electricity. He lives on canned food raided from grocery stores. He transmits a radio message every day, looking for other survivors. He exercises and works in his laboratory. He is smart and disciplined, but the pressure to find a cure and his solitary confinement are wearing him down. He carries on conversations with mannequins to an unhealthy level. He watches taped televised news shows from before the plague. Finally, he snaps. He goes on a suicidal rampage, declaring war on the monstrous infected beings.

While the infected killers never speak, the film indicates they are intelligent since they manage to set a clever trap for Neville at one point. In the book, the infected killers are intelligent, and consider themselves the rightful heirs to the planet that the humans once dominated. The film doesn't go that far, holding the infected at a sub-human level. The film doesn't explain how a cancer cure could cause people to become so incredibly fast and strong, or why they can't survive exposure to sunlight, or why they don't speak or share common human values. They are just standard movie monsters, and that's disappointing. The film's final act arrives and ends very abruptly as new characters are introduced and there is a sudden change on the scientific front. There are other unlikely revelations as well at the end of the film. This film rates a B.

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Copyright © 2008 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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