'I Am Legend' starts out strong

Director: Francis Lawrence

Rated PG-13

(Two and one half stars)

By Bruce Bulloch

Give him credit; director Francis Lawrence knows how to properly introduce the apocalypse.

In the opening scene of "I Am Legend," Robert Neville (Will Smith) careens down a New York City street in a cherry-red Mustang - dog in the passenger seat, sniper rifle across his lap - chasing a herd of deer.

The cityscape that flashes by is an indictment of urban hygiene. Weeds worm their way through cracks in the pavement, cars are strewn rather than parked, and dirt and shabbiness abound. It's every Midwesterner's nightmare of the Big Apple before Rudy Giuliani came on the scene, except that nobody's there - not a functioning hot dog or pretzel cart are to be found (no wonder he's so intent on those deer).

Robert has survived a virus that was genetically manufactured to fight cancer cells but instead has ravaged the human population, leaving New York City a ghost town. In the quiet after the hunt the full impact of Robert's predicament begins to work on you. Lawrence artfully intertwines loneliness and fear, allowing them to feed on each other and build a dark tension in his film.

In a beautifully rendered scene, Robert shutters his apartment against the unknown terrors of the night then hunkers down in the bathtub with his dog and rifle to wait out the dawn. This moment, when Robert should be finding respite from the day, is in itself a portrait of stress and despair.

It's during this first half of the film that "I Am Legend" is at its best. Lawrence paints his picture of Robert's ruined world in staccato bits of revelation, mixing up adrenaline infused moments of terror with the unexpected pleasure of finding a useable can of spam.

Not everyone was killed off, it turns out, but the virus has left them in a state where death may have been the better bargain and Robert, a doctor, has been struggling without success to reverse the disease's effect.

Lawrence gets a surprising amount of help from Will Smith. Smith, an actor better known for his charming patter than his ability to expose the deep currents of his soul, is pretty convincing as a guy who's spent the last three years talking to a dog.

While Lawrence has done such a great job leading us down into the depths of this post-apocalyptic world, that's not where he wants the journey to end. He tries for a sunny ending to his movie but doesn't quite know how to get there. As he begins to inject bits of hope into Robert's world, the story loses steam. The surprises that come later in the movie don't have the same dramatic satisfaction. In fact, after the first glimmer of surprise they feel clich