Will Smith’s “I Am Legend” represents the best and the worst in modern filmmaking.

On the one hand, there are the Hollywood aspects that are easy to tear to shreds. If you’ve seen “I, Robot,” you seen just about all there is to see–again, Will Smith is the lone savior for mankind, now virologist Robert Neville. Again, he is facing destruction by an unstoppable hubristic invention of mankind, this time a cancer-curing virus that turns out to create rabid, light fearing and creatively named “dark seekers” that have taken over the nights in New York City. And again, he hocks fashionable electronics and sports cars as his character struggles against his threat.

However, these moments are dark spots on a film that delivers on so many levels in the first and second acts. The feeling of loneliness we feel as Neville goes about his daily routine is heartbreaking at times, in part due to the superb design of a NYC ravaged by both disease and years of disuse, as its residents dwindled to bloody corpses and the dreaded dark seekers.

It’s a one man show, and even though by the third act it seems exactly like one we’ve seen before, the first hour and a half are a ride that really deliver on the production design, acting talent and overall delivery of the spirit of the novel by the same name.

Fans of the novel will hate the film for the huge amount of changes levied on the story and characters, but audiences seeking a decent albeit flawed action film will not be disappointed.