I Am Legend

I Am Legend (2007) - 6/10

First Viewed: 4/4/08
Directed by Francis Lawrence
Starring Will Smith as Robert Neville and The Dog as Samantha

I Am Legend is essentially a big budget film that serves to provide thrills. Will Smith plays a colonel/doctor named Robert who helped engineer a virus that was designed to destroy cancer. The virus, of course, goes out of control and kills off most of the population, leaving the few survivors to fend off against zombie-like victims.

The film's main problem is that it juggles between different storylines and genres that don't mesh well. Initially, we are shown many fascinating shots of what New York may look like without having any people for three years. Robert, along with his canine companion, Samantha, goes through a daily routine that includes gardening, renting movies, and hitting golf balls off of aircraft carriers. This concept is the most fun and inventive and the film inevitably falters when it ventures into other territory.

Robert frequently has flashbacks to the night he tried to get his family off of Manhattan Island, which had been infected with the virus. This is where the script's weaknesses are most apparent with cliched dialogue, obligatory shots of panicked people, and Robert's little daughter who simply says the dumbest things. While this is kind of irrelevant, I'll just go ahead and say that the way Robert loses his family is astoundingly lame.

The film devolves into a horror movie that pits Robert against swarms of zombies. I think that Lawrence made a poor decision in choosing to rely exclusively on CGI. It's a bad sign when the deer Robert hunts in the beginning of the film look laughably fake running through the streets of New York. The zombies don't fare any better; their movements resemble cartoons and the actual renderings of their faces in close-ups is, again, laughable. Lawrence should have used costumes and makeup, but the animation team should be ashamed of themselves for failing to create memorable creatures.

Finally, I strongly dislike the ending. It was very anticlimactic and sickeningly optimistic in a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant-ey (WASP-ey) way. That description probably sounds strange, but the survivors' colony is portrayed as a land with lush lighting, church bells ringing, American flags flying, people shaking hands and smiling - this vision is completely, once again, laughable.

Despite many weaknesses, the film is still enjoyable, if safe, blockbuster entertainment. There are some sequences that are intense and Will Smith is pretty good in his role as the only human in New York, but the film's wasted potential is inexcusable.