After a man-made virus decimates the world's population, only military virologist Robert Neville is left unaffected. By day he roams the deserted streets of Manhattan, stockpiling supplies and sending out radio messages in the hopes of being heard by other survivors. By night he locks himself in his fortified home, hiding from the ravening, blood-thirsty infected. He is determined to find a cure for the disease and the ghastly mutations it causes. But he is vastly outnumbered and running out of time…

However, Lawrence squanders all the goodwill he has accrued during the opening half-hour as soon as he introduces the bad guys. Then the film stops being about people and starts being about special effects. He shows too much too soon and continues on an excessive bent thereafter. The infected are pure CGI; grey, slimy-skinned, hairless, Gollum-like creations that may have the edge in numbers but do nothing to create a sense of menace. It's because they appear soulless; though there are suggestions of a kind of hive mind mentality, they don't have any strong emotional responses to anything. So there's no real reason for them to go after Neville with such a vengeance. Because they don't speak, we have no idea about their motivations and the whole movie becomes a one-man-against-the-monsters thing. You never feel like Will Smith is in danger because they are so obviously computer-generated, as with the animals on his hunting trip in the city. The later stunts rectify this in some small manner as they are more physical. But all the great action in the world can't undo the damage created by a sickeningly Hollywood ending that completely undermines what has gone before. And the launch into pure action causes crunching shifts of gear and upsets the pacing of what could otherwise have been a slow-burn chiller. The result is an often frustrating, underwhelming hundred-and-ten-minutes of missed opportunities.

The decision to make Neville's opponents faceless killers diminishes the power of the story. It would be much more compelling if the hero was butting heads with sentient beings with clear wants and needs. For instance, a desire for revenge would make their actions more believable and give more of an emotional edge to Neville's research. It would then lead you to question the morality of what he's doing, what "normal" is and whether what has happened is mutation in the negative sense or evolution. It may seem odd to harp on about what isn't in the script, but that's because there really isn't much going on in terms of story in this version. Neville essentially mopes around New York with his dog, snags a mutant to experiment on and then comes under siege. He's a likeable enough hero but there isn't enough depth to the narrative for you to remember much of the movie once the credits roll. The dialogue is limited, but I guess it's difficult to write for someone who spends much of the movie talking to himself.

The original music by James Newton Howard is pretty much par for the course for this type of movie. It begins with forbidding electronic rumbles and continues with a series of short dark string motifs that add atmosphere to the empty city. Neville's solitude is underlined by sad, heartfelt piano motifs and warm, rising string arrangements. His hunting trip is accompanied by unsettling timpani, chimes and strings. The flashbacks to the evacuation feature brooding, rising strings with warm brass and plaintive piano and rising strings bring tension to the final attack.