I Am Legend
By Jason Revill
After what should have been a cure for cancer mutates, killing most of the Earth’s population, Robert Neville (Will Smith) is the last man standing. Unfortunately, those the virus didn’t kill were turned into rabid, carnivorous subhumans that pretty much ate anyone who was immune to the virus. On the plus side they are sensitive to UV radiation and have to hide out when the sun is out, so Neville is able to scavenge and forage over and empty New York City. He spends his nights barricaded in self made apartment fortress and his days sticking to a strict routine that includes trying to contact survivors and finding a cure for the virus. He is completely isolated other than his dog and a few store mannequins that he has set up to give some semblance of normalcy. It isn’t until two other survivors hear his calls over the radio and seek Neville out that he even believes that there are other uninfected survivors. It’s too bad that their arrival and the breaking of his routine eventually lead to tragedy.
I like Will Smith as much the next guy and, sure, Tom Hanks he ain’t, but he does a surprisingly good job here. There’s a lot of weight on his shoulders considering that his only real supporting characters are a bunch of computer generated pseudo zombies and a dog. The dog is quite good as well, the zombies not so much. There are other actors, but they really play more like fodder for the plot than anything else. It’s pretty much all up to Smith and other than a few moments where he ventures a little too far into the comedic, he really does capture Neville’s desperation and isolation. Every now and then you kind of feel that you’re watching the first half of an outtake, but for the most part that doesn’t happen until the movie starts to go into the crapper anyway.
It’s kind of funny that one of the best things about I Am Legend is the CGI, while the thing that ruins it is also the CGI. The shots of New York’s empty streets like some series of giant manmade canyons with deer bounding through intersections and abandoned cars are just eerily beautiful. The thousands and thousands of empty windows staring down on a city that is overgrown and beginning to crumble is the postmodern equivalent of creepy paintings in a haunted house. You know there shouldn’t be anything there looking back at you, but you can’t help but feel that isn’t the case.
For the first hour or so of I Am Legend everything is all well and good with Will Smith trying to survive in the city interspersed with flashbacks to show us how the world got into the shape it has. The problem lies when we start to get to the crux of the matter with the zombies, and let’s face it that’s what they are. First off, they simply aren’t scary. While some of their movements are quite good, they never really feel like they are fully integrated into the film. It’s bad enough that they are some weird vampire-zombie hybrid, but when it looks like you just dropped a video game character into the middle of an otherwise good looking move, it doesn’t work at all. These things are the source of action and when there is no sense of them actually being in the scenes with Smith, it’s really hard to build any sort of tension.
It isn’t so much that I Am Legend is a bad movie it’s just that the final third where all the explosions and action are isn’t nearly as good as the rest of the film. The louder this film gets, the worse it gets. Unfortunately, when you walk out of the theater that’s the part you leave with. The great success, however, is that first hour of Will Smith and his isolated silence. It really is too bad that after spending so much time watching what could be a sci-fi classic everything devolves into what is basically another 28 Days Later rip-off , except crappy like 28 Weeks Later.
The Grade
- Story: C
- Acting: B
- Visuals: C
- Originality: B-
- Enjoyability: B-
- Overall: B-
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