Col. Robert Neville with dog Sam prowls the decaying streets and landscape of these famous but now deserted city being overrun by nature. Going about their daily routine: renting DVDs, looking for supplies, hunting deer, waiting for other humans, if there are any, who might have heard his all AM frequency broadcast, finding a cure to the virus at his basement laboratory and sealing his house just before darkness falls.

The film, clearly, a star vehicle for Smith has to carry the movie on his shoulders, especially the first part where he is all there alone with his dog in the wild trying to survive against a bleak backdrop of urban decay. And his acting prowess really doesn’t disappoint. However, while there’s no doubt about his capabilities, the movie in general left me with some questions. These might be trivial to some but nevertheless, are still questions that the movie tried to wiggle out by way of a line or two of dialogue.

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It’s a diabolic dance between two classes of people at both ends: the royalty, safely ensconced at their palaces tenaciously clinging to tradition and protocol at one end; the public, and thus the subjects, at the other stoked by media into a Diana frenzy demanding that the monarchy do the same. Bridging the two is the newly minted Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

Central to the movie is Her Majesty Queen Eizabeth II played with aplomb by Helen Mirren. Other than the uncanny resemblance, she does gives justice to the role with quite dignity and steely composure. She provides a look at, perhaps, how the queen, a fiercely independent woman saw and reacted to the apparent weakening of the monarchy’s influence brought about by their aloofness and detachment but at the same time, humble enough to be receptive of her Prime Minister’s advice.

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A crafty lawyer, Mitchell Stephens, who one day just pops into town, manages to convince almost all the affected families that they can do something about it. That they can direct their rage and suffering and possibly be compensated for it, of which he keeps 1/3 if successful, by filing a class suit for negligence, against the school board, the manufacturer of the bus or who anyone they can blame.

The Sweet Hereafter, an adaption from a novel by Russel Banks explores the town’s deep grief and suffering and how people, sometimes, in their desperation fail to see the opportunistic manipulations of others. This, without presenting it as tear jerking or too melodramatic. However, it’s confusing as the storyline is non-linear. It goes to and fro. Forward and back. But I guess it’s not used as a gimmick but a carefully planned device to heighten the viewer’s anticipation. And rightly so, as the storyline starts to converge and the pieces are finally coming into place.

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To get out of it all, even for a while, he traveled to Cebu with his girlfriend to join a video contest of the province’s famous festival, the Sinulog.

Unexpectedly, Ryan stumbles upon a politician who chose him, even if it was against his will, to tell the politician’s story, a former mayor in an unnamed town in Mindanao who believes that his days are numbered. What better way to leave a legacy than to tell the truth and come clean? Is he a criminal mending his ways? Is he honest? Is this, at last, the truth that Ryan has been searching for? In the end, sometimes, the truth is just too tough to handle.

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