OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS: Robert Neville (Will Smith) is a brilliant scientist. But when a man-made virus can't be contained, Neville finds himself the last human survivor in New York City and potentially the world. For three years he faithfully sends out daily radio messages, desperate to find other survivors. But he is not alone... Mutant victims of the plague (The Infected) lurk in the shadows, waiting to catch Neville out. As perhaps Earth's last hope for mankind, Neville is driven only by the desire to somehow reverse the effects of the virus before it's too late...

REVIEW: It might have been released in the cinema to mixed reviews, but I Am Legend gripped me from the very first scene.
Robert Neville (Smith), with only his dog Sam for company, is searching the deserted streets of New York, where he is apparently the only survivor of a man-made virus that has seemingly wiped out the city's population and much of the world beyond.
The first point to note is that the scenes of a New York utterly deserted are simply staggering and so amazingly realistic that you can't help but be taken in by this unlikely scenario.
Perhaps the starkest image is of hundreds of cars stacked up, their presence a visceral image of the desperation of their owners as they tried to flee New York before the decision was taken to cut off the city.
Aside from several flashbacks to the evacuation of New York three years earlier, Smith is the only human character on screen for the first hour of the movie and to his immense credit he holds our attention brilliantly.
There is palpable tension from the first scene as Smith tries on the one hand to make contact with any other human survivors but on the other to stay out of the reach of mutant victims of the plague who are only able to venture outside after dark.
Director Francis Lawrence keeps things incredibly tense throughout a stunning first hour, but perhaps inevitably, the remainder of the film doesn't quite reach those standards.
For about 20 minutes Lawrence loses his way slightly and the mutants are not as ferocious as we expect when they are finally unveiled.
But that's the smallest of criticisms and the film recovers again to build to a nailbiting finale.

VERDICT: For the bleak landscapes of a deserted New York alone, I Am Legend is worth watching. But there is so much more to a film that for an hour at least, aspires to and almost reaches greatness.