I Am Legend starts out well, showing great restraint by building tension gradually and knowing not to show it’s hand too soon. Will Smith brings a good blend of humour and pathos where many actors would have rolled out a tired old clichéd performance.

Smith manages to get us to actually care about a character in what is essentially a horror film, which I for one think is a great feat. Unfortunately the script lets him down as the dramatic elements of the film are eventually abandoned for more standard Hollywood fare.

Where the begining of the film showed restraint, the latter part of the film throws caution to the wind, as if they couldn’t figure out a fitting ending for the film they had begun.

The film’s premise is that a deadly virus has devastated earth, and Will Smith’s character Rovert Neville is a brilliant military scientist who is immune to the virus. Alone in New York city, apart from his canine companion Sam, he continues to research a cure for the virus while being careful not to fall prey to the victims of the virus who are now zombie like creatures.

During the first part of the film we see him review the results of his latest failed batch of tests for a cure, and we wait for the clever revelation which will lead to his discovery of a true cure. However, what we get instead is a flimsy and ridiculous plot device which one would expect from a lesser horror movie. This device is presumably meant to distract us from the original expectations such that we won’t notice the utterly crap ending to what began as a very promising horror drama.

Three stars for the entertainment given before the film degenerated into the worst kind of hollywood crap.

Don’t be fooled by the cast, do not go and see this film. The trailer makes it look like it might be a bit of old fashioned brother against brother cop movie fun, but my god does this script stink. the only reason to go and see this film would be to marvel at how Joaquin Phoenix can utter such complete rubbish without losing his dignity while even the great Robert Duvall comes across a complete wooden turkey.

Mark Wahlberg is equally unable to make this horrendous script sound anyway plausible and even the presence of Eva Mendes fails to make watching this disaster bearable.

One star only because I have to give it a star rating - must ask LouderVoice to include a no-star rating…

Good reviews and hype can destroy a film by setting expectations too high - and this may have been a problem for American Gangster. This film was hyped quite a bit following it’s release in the States and the word ‘Epic’ was bandied about a lot and I seem to remember Goodfellas being mentioned and maybe even the Godfather. Perhaps because of the American hype, the reviews this side of the pond didn’t seem as glowing which meant my expectations were low enough, and possibly as a result, I loved it.

American Gangster has nothing particularly original going for it, but it does the cop vs gangster thing very well. Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington are extremely watchable, Crowe in particular impressed me as Detective Richie Roberts- I have been going off him a lot recently - but this honest and down to earth performance has renewed my faith in him as an actor who can get over his own ego and give a striking performance.

Washington was perhaps a little too squeaky clean to play the brutal gangster Frank Lucas, but I think this was a deliberate move on the part of the director to mark the contrast between the cop and the gangster, and also to highlight the better side of the Lucas as an intelligent values driven man.

Much like Pitt in the Jesse James film, Washington overcomes any shortcomings on the brutal side by being wonderfully watchable on screen.

American Gangster is set in the seventies and manages to recapture that flat seventies feel which is not to everybodies taste. The finish on the film reminded me of the similarly seventies feel that Zodiac achieved, managing to create dramatic tension without having to resort to carefully orchestrated scores to tell you how you should be feeling at any given moment.

This is very much a character based film, thankfully there are no car chases or major shootouts, but the efforts of both the honest cop and the innovative gangster to make successes of themselves despite the odds make for great watching.

Based on a true story, I would be very interested to know how true to life they kept the stories.

The end of the film is somewhat rushed, understandably perhaps, as there was clearly another film’s worth of material in the final fifteen minutes of an already fairly long film - perhaps someone will make that film another day…

Saw this last week and loved it. I tried to read the book, and although it was really good I never finished it because it was a hard slog. The writing was undeniably excellent but incredibly dense. I plugged through a few chapters but every time I put it down a part of me dreaded picking it back up because, even though I was enjoying it, it was hard work. I didn’t think they could make this into a film, but I think they managed to capture the spirit of the book at least.

Casey Affleck was incredibly brilliant, Brad Pitt was miscast. I believe it was a pet project of Pitt’s so presumably no one was going to tell him he wasn’t right for it. Pitt played Jesse James who, according to the voiceover, becomes a tormented soul as the film progresses - however this was not particularly well presented to us in the acting. He got it in brief flashes, but it just wasn’t sustained enough to convince, which was a shame because it took a lot from the circumstances of the inevitable assisination, but I’ll say no more on that lest I give anything away. Pitt was as engaging and entertaining to watch as ever, and this gets him through the film despite his failure to delve in and produce what was really required of the character.

Casey Affleck on the other hand was a bit shaky to begin with in my opinion but went from strength to strength as the film progressed. Looking forward to seeing more of this actor in 2008.

Sam Rockwell also gives a great performance as Robert Fords brother, he has some beautifully acted scenes where his love for his brother and his fear of his friend Jesse James come into conflict.

The film looks and feels incredibly beautiful, several people I went with felt it was overly long, but I loved every incredibly slow paced minute of it. I particularly liked the gunfight in the bedroom for it’s realism. Watch out for it.