I Am Legend
w. Mark Protosevich & Akiva Goldsman, d. Francis Lawrence. I Am Legend has been years in the making, which is kind of funny, considering the source material (a novella by Richard Matheson of the same name) provided inspiration for the Chuck Heston classic, The Omega Man and the equally classic Vincent Price vehicle, The Last Man On Earth (and also a Spanish interpretation). The story was supposed to film with a pre-Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger in the lead role, but that was almost a decade ago when that idea was swirling around, and I shudder a little bit at the though of spending an hour and a half with Ah-nuld talking to himself.
Amalgamating the Cheston film and Matheson's novel as well as its own fresh little tweaks, the story of I Am Legend finds a solitary man in a desolate New York three years after a man-made contagion (originally intended as a cure for cancer) practically exterminated all of humanity, turning rare survivors into mutated zombies. Even rarer were those immune from the virus, and rarer still those who survive in spite of the creatures.
One of those such men is Robert Neville (Will Smith), a military scientist who frustratingly continues to try to develop a cure from his own blood. He's traumatized by his memories of society's collapse and the loss of his wife and child, and his only saving grace is his companion, Sam, a German shepherd. Neville is his own creatures of routine, waking up, resetting his alarm for sundown, working out, eating breakfast, working on his serum, waiting at the pier for any other survivors, hunting the wildlife that have reclaimed the city, "renting" a video, chatting up the locals (dressed and staged mannequins) and then returning home for dinner, closing his steel shutters in every room at sundown, when the creatures, hyper-reactive to ultraviolet, come out and take over.
But three years of solitude have taken its toll. Neville obviously still physically strong and healthy and his scientific mind sound, but common sense and rationality are as tenuously bound to reality as his mutant traps are bound to the ground... capable of snapping at the lightest touch. It's an equally exciting and frightening world Neville lives in, the concept of being the sole being in a city is pretty attractive (for a short period) but being completely devoid of any human communication, any interaction, and it's clear how dire life would be. If not for Sam, Neville would have lost it completely long ago, and he desperately clings to the idea of a cure to keep him going, the hope of restoring life stronger than his own fear of death.
Amidst the horror/thriller/action/sci-fi is a meaty character study of a man both burdened and determined, the philosophy of Bob Marley ("the people that are trying to make this world worse are not taking a day off, how can I") his mantra and his hope ("every little thing gonna be alright"). That the movie actually works is a testament to Smith and his ability to step outside his "Will Smith" character when the role demands it. More than he ever has, Smith looks haggard despite his fit physique: wrinkles on his babyface are lit to highlight his actual age, the stubble on his face and head showing signs of greying. Smith sells the movie with an exceptionally emotional performance which rings truer than perhaps any hyped blockbuster deserves.
But there does seem to be an understanding that it's the core performance that the success of the movie hinders upon, even more so than creating a convincing desolate New York (and the digital work done here does effectively create a chilling cityscape - vegetation cracking through the pavement, buildings in disrepair, flooded tunnels) or believable mutants. If there is a failure though, it is the latter. The zombies are uniformly generic CGI generated figures that look like video game figures that spilled out into the real world. I understand the impulse to go with CGI, but the effects are horribly cartoonish. Though the dodgy CGI doesn't completely destroy the film, had they went with practical effects wherever possible (ie. bodies in make-up), this really good film would have been virtually flawless.
I want to like this film more, as it does so much right, from the integration of flashback sequences to the "natural" sound of New York (aside from the odd Marley tune there is no musical score), to the exceptional amount of detail of Robert Neville's New York (his apartment has some Van Goughs and other such treasures stored amidst it), however it's cop-out with CGI (from zombies to digital lions) really lessens the intensity. Where they should have taken a page from 28 Days Later they instead went for Resident Evil.
-3.5/5-