What does Will Smith have in common with Vincent Price and Charlton Heston? They’ve all played Dr. Robert Neville in adaptations of a novel Richard Matheson published in 1954. The Price version, 1964’s The Last Man on Earth, has the most plot-descriptive title. (The Heston version is 1971’s The Omega Man.) Here, we find Smith’s Neville having set up house in a barricaded brownstone in Manhattan. He’s possibly the only person immune to the viral plague that’s killed off most of humanity and turned the rest into aggressive zombies like in 28 Days Later, hence the need for the barricades.
Coincidentally, I guess, Dr. Neville is not only a survivor but a virologist who has been studying a cure. He’s a lot more purely heroic than the earlier Dr. Nevilles, singlehandedly trying to save the world while fighting off computer-generated zombies and still finding time to pump iron every day. Yet he’s not really an action hero, and only in part can this be classified as a thriller. Neville also spends his time chatting with his dog and listening to Bob Marley, whose best-known album title—Legend—and early death from cancer may have inspired the screenwriters, along with his message of peace.
Compared to earlier versions of the story, this is less horror, more science fiction, with the emphasis on what it’s like to be truly alone. Director Francis Lawrence (Constantine) makes good use of quietness and the eerily placid urban spaces. The screenplay is co-written by Akiva Goldsman, an Oscar winner for A Beautiful Mind. It reminded me of Cast Away, the Tom Hanks movie, only with the dog as the conversational volleyball substitute. And yet somehow I found that film more powerful, especially the ending, whose ambiguity this would have done well to emulate. There’s a good deal of flashback about Smith’s missing, presumably dead, wife and daughter that feels too perfunctory to be affecting, yet adds little to the plot. It’s a game effort at a thinking-person’s sci-fi, but one I can only recommend with reservations.
reviewed 12/26/07
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