"That is correct."
The potential with this film is very apparent, but it misses the mark. M. Night Shyamalan brings a very distinctive directing style to his movies, and whilst this movie is a notable improvement on his recent outings, the dour tone applied appropriately to The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable simply does not fit well with what should be more action-oriented and passionate genre material such The Happening and indeed After Earth could have been. By deliberately stunting (crippling?) the emotional responses of the two leads - Smith Snr is a locked-in military chief, Smith Jnr is his damaged and struggling teen son - the result is a rather underwhelming father-son character study punctuated by some absolutely wonderful location shooting and some very undernourished but occasionally thrilling action set pieces (note that the IMAX format adds very little indeed). In this respect, it is interesting to see the much-needed warmth injected by Sophie Okonedo as the wife/mother in her too-brief appearances. Will Smith does play some scenes well in terms of control, but he has to take second seat to son Jaden whose performance, as the active protagonist, varies wildly from showing some effective nuance to simple immaturity. The sci-fi premise of a super-evolved predator-filled Earth is interesting, as is some design, such as the organic-styled interiors of spacecraft, but this is not enough to compensate for the general lack of emotional engagement this film displays and indeed generates with the viewer.
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