''When I started in movies, I said, 'I want to be the biggest movie star in the world.' The biggest movie stars make the biggest movies, so (my producing partner James Lassiter and I) looked at the top 10 movies of all time. At that point, they were all special-effects movies. So Independence Day -- no-brainer. Men in Black -- no-brainer. I, Robot -- no-brainer.'' -- Will Smith, Entertainment Weekly, "Hollywood's 50 Smartest," Nov. 28, 2007
And that's a fairly loaded turn of phrase, because to many movie fans, 'no-brainer' better describes the scripts and direction of Independence Day, Men in Black and I, Robot than it does the decision to star in them. And before seeing I Am Legend, a third Hollywood version of Richard Matheson's 1954 book following in the footsteps of 1964's The Last Man on Earth and 1971's The Omega Man, the specter and spectacle of Smith's track record in big-budget science fiction loomed like a dark cloud. I walked into I Am Legend cautious and underwhelmed, with Smith's past genre efforts in mind; I staggered out of I Am Legend impressed and enthused and a little wrung-out after a well-executed and perfectly pitched demonstration of brute-force big-money horror-action film making. I'm hesitant to say how well I Am Legend will endure the test of time, but while you're watching it, you're caught in an iron grip, moved and manipulated and carried away by film makers who know exactly how to make you sink into our seat with dread. I shivered and tensed throughout I Am Legend, and at the end of the credits, I was dumbstruck to learn it was PG-13; it felt far more gripping and grim and upsetting than that rating would suggest.
I Am Legend opens with a TV newsblip, as the disarmingly unpolished Doctor Krippen explains that she and her team have found a cure for cancer by re-engineering potent viruses to attack it. The cure works; it works every time. Dr. Krippen (played by an uncredited actress whose name I won't give, but she's perfect) smiles, nervous and nerdy in her moment of triumph, and then a title jumps us Three Years Later. We see Manhattan desolate and quiet. The tunnels are flooded; the bridges destroyed; cars rust and molder as weeds crack through the pavement; some buildings wear plastic sheeting like a burial shroud. And then we see one car -- just one, a Mustang GT -- racing through the ruined streets.
The driver's Dr. Robert Neville (Smith); Neville was a doctor for the U.S. Army, a virologist. Now, he's a survivor. He may be the last one. He and his dog Sam forage and worry, with all of New York as their empty playground during the daylight. Night time, as we gather from Neville battening down iron hatches over his doors and windows at the dimming of the day, is a different story. I Am Legend has almost no voice-over, and does its best to keep exposition to a minimum, both of which add to the slow-poison sense of dread in the movie. When Sam's raced into a darkened building chasing a wounded deer during one of their daytime excursions and Neville hesitates to follow, the only thing to explain the stakes to the audience is Smith's performance and the storytelling choices of director Francis Lawrence (Constantine) as a frightened Neville sneaks through the dark, desperate to find Sam and even more desperate to get out. Smith is a charming star, but he's not charming here; watching him in I Am Legend, he's constantly sad, scared or lonely; Neville is constantly at the edge of madness or the brink of death. And Smith, to his credit, turns a character that could have been an off-the-rack collection of action hero clichés into a real and affecting performance. If we believe I Am Legend's flights of dark fancy, it's in large part because Neville believes them, to the trembling core of his soul.
And Neville should be scared; flashbacks and current events explain to us that the Krippen Cure became the Krippen Virus, and literally decimated the human race; any who survived live on as seemingly mindless, colorless, blood-hungry revved-up predators that burn at the touch of the sun. Neville is one of the minuscule fraction of humans with natural immunity to KV, but that scattered and struggling group was swiftly wiped out by the monsters as near as Neville can tell. Neville is still trying to find a cure -- he mutters "I can fix this" repeatedly as he walks the ruined world -- but he's hardly hopeful. He thinks he's the last man alive, facing an army of mindless monsters. He's wrong about a lot of things.
Regrettably, if a monster movie is only as good as its monsters, then I Am Legend loses a few points for the execution of the KV-creatures. Making every appearance of the creatures computer-generated animation (with scattered exceptions of make-up and models in specific shots) means that the KV-creatures begin to look a little too similar, a little too familiar. When the creatures swarm, you can almost hear the mouse-click sound as they're copied and pasted over and over again, an army of the identical. And while the 28 Days Later adrenaline-zombie aesthetic may be overly familiar, it still works in scenes where the howling half-human KV-creatures race towards murder -- and Akiva Goldsman and Mark Protosevitch's script always makes the level of threat the creatures present scary, even as Lawrence leans on every B-movie trick in the book. One of the best things in I Am Legend is how firmly things go from bad to worse to far, far worse like an elevator to hell, smoothly oiled and gaining speed on the way down to the depths. Goldsman and Protosevitch also fill the film with tiny, quiet details -- an abandoned apartment is posted with public health warning from the beginning of the plague; Neville's working his way through the 'G' section at the video store; Neville's bunker-brownstone is decorated with pilfered masterpieces. And while the script may have a few groan-inducing moments where subtext is spoken as text, there's nothing here to compare with the worst moments of modern big-budget sci-fi, whether the staggering stupidity of Independence Day or the clumsy cloying closure of Spielberg's War of the Worlds.
Lawrence had the good judgment to fill his technical staff with professionals, from cinematographer Andrew Lensie (King Kong, The Lord of the Rings films) to second-unit director Vic Armstrong, whose stunt and action-director work makes him legend in and of itself. (Armstrong's resume ranges from Bond to Blade, Superman to Starship Troopers, and his work here is top-notch.) Not every decision Lawrence makes is perfect -- one of Smith's forays into Times Square is shot hand-held, which feels curiously distancing, subconciously implying that the Last Man on Earth is being followed by the Last Cameraman on Earth -- but at the same time, the film's mix of present-tense (in fact, very tense) action and flashbacks is well-handled and engrossing. As I cautioned before, I don't know how well I Am Legend will hold up on repeat viewings, or over time -- but while it's happening, I Am Legend is a slick, scary, superbly made action/science fiction/horror film with a lot more art, heart and smarts than you'd expect.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-14-2007 @ 12:37AM
Claudia Lomelí said...
Well, this makes me hopeful. I really want to like this films, but the reviews are either saying that is superb or that is crap. But I'm still going to watch the film and I hope I enjoy it. By the way, I know what scene you mean with last cameraman on earth, it's the opening scene, they have it on Yahoo! Movies.
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12-14-2007 @ 12:45AM
Brendan said...
By the sounds of it, the film takes a lot of liberties with the book. That's always a little disappointing, but considering that the success of the novel was in bringing to life Neville's repetitive, lonely existence to life and in capturing the inner-thoughts of such a man, it was always going to be a big task to transfer to the big screen in tact.
As such, I'm mentally preparing myself for a mildly-entertaining 'Diet 28 Days Later' - judging by your review, I should be satisfied!
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12-14-2007 @ 3:33AM
Scott K said...
Oh come on, Men In Black is great.
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12-14-2007 @ 7:05AM
John R said...
sweet. knowing this it sounds like the Joker prologue will be the icing on the cake.
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12-14-2007 @ 2:03PM
emily said...
I missed the midnight screening last night, but I'm going to see this movie no matter what the reviews. The way they marketed it I'm sure there are going to be elements in it I really like, even if they are just stand alone elements. I just found out the God Still Loves Us Contest is part of I AM LEGEND's marketing campaign Check it out it's friggin awesome. I heard about it on Kirk Skodis' blog if you want the full connection.
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12-14-2007 @ 6:45PM
Kris said...
I saw the movie on Tuesday at a preview screening in Providence. This review nails my feelings about this movie almost perfectly.
As a side note, while looking it up on Wiki I found reference to a new straight to DVD version of the movie called I Am Omega, which looks horrible. It provides a nice comparison :)
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12-14-2007 @ 10:59PM
Ian said...
Hmmmm. Just saw this and thought it was better than Smith's more recent work. It was a bit truer to the source than previous efforts, but was still pretty liberal with changing things. Look up the book on wikipedia for the actual meaning of "I am legend" or better yet, read the book.
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12-14-2007 @ 11:56PM
Kyle said...
Couldn't disagree more.
If plagiarism is illegal, this should be illegal too. What do I mean by "this", you ask?
Well, I mean the absolute butchering of a story and then "claiming" to have based it off a book. I know, I know, adaptations off true stories or books are usually 1% book. But where does one draw the line between an adaptation and an entirely new story.
Meet Akiva Goldsman. He should be banned from writing adaptations for anything else. In fact, throw out his not-yet-finished script for Angels and Demons. He's butchered EVERYTHING he's touched. Hell, now I can see why he was the one behind Batman and Robin - the worst Batman film of all time.
In Da Vinci code, he essentially neutered the punch. Apparently, he doesn't want to offend. But at what cost. It appears at any cost. Even the thought of POTENTIALLY offending someone sits uncomfortably with him. Look, in the Code, he changes things that cinematically don't need to be changed. Things like the main heroine's grandpa, grandma and brother whom are very vital to the story. Like the adding of retarded scenes to appease religious crowds. And for what?
Now, in Code's defense, Ron Howard saved the film making it an acceptable stand alone film. Yes, neutered and all, it stands alone as watchable and even ownable. Though, it must be said that the book is much, much better.
And that brings me to Legend. Let me say this upfront. Will Smith cannot save this movie. He does his best. And I have to say, it's very, very good. He takes frustration, emotion, longing for companionship, etc (all of which is in the book) and conveys it flawlessly.
The director of Constantine, cannot save this film. The script is rubbish. It's total rubbish. And what I fear more than anything is it's rubbish because the book deals with evolution. (Of course, this is a thread by itself and spoiler heavy).
In fact, I think the movie illustrates it nicely. The book is Robert Neville. The movie are all the horrible creatures hunting Neville. They have no soul (story). They have no core. They have craftsmanship issues (skin meets light). He is immune. He sits alone (book a bookshelf). And the best part is, the ending shows just how willing Akiva is to butcher a film. To take it's soul and destroy it.
Needless to say, this film is a step above horrible. It's not quite the worst movie ever or this year, even. But it's definitely not okay. It's about as okay as the vampire/zombies in the film.
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12-16-2007 @ 2:57PM
Amorde said...
I'm not a Will Smith fan but this film left me impressed. Very few actors can carry a movie by themselves for over half a hour. Guess he finally moved beyond the stipulations of having a bigger name co-star with him in every movie. The film is great in examining the psychology of the last man on earth,
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12-17-2007 @ 1:02AM
Seattle-Yonkers said...
I definitely enjoyed this one, and I really wasn't expecting to. Most last man on earth/zombie movies have a tendency to kind of all fold out the same, with that annoying everyone rides off into the sun set of kind of ending. [Spoiler] And while this movie had that, too, to an extent, it offered a level of realism (in Sam & Robert's fates) that I particularly liked. The end left me wanting more, and that's rare for me in the movies these days.
Oh, and you're right, the actress playing Dr. Krippen is well, perfect.
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12-17-2007 @ 8:12AM
MorseMoose said...
93xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Yea! for Minnesota Radio. Listen to your reviews every Thursday. You mentioned this one this last week and saw it based off of your recommendation.
Glad I did. Great movie. Great action and Great review.
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12-17-2007 @ 3:04PM
Shannon said...
We saw this yestersday and I LOVED it. I truly felt for both characters (nobody can tell me that dog wasn't a character) and empathized with the loneliness and desperation Will Smith conveyed. I think this may be the best bit of acting he's ever done. I haven't read the book, but intend to, with the full knowledge that movies never stick to the books.
Also, something other comments haven't alluded to-- take some tissues...
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12-19-2007 @ 9:26AM
thebabycobbler said...
I am looking for the sound track or what songs were played on the movie. I know they are Marley songs but don't know which ones?
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12-23-2007 @ 12:20AM
Porcalina said...
Kyle - I completely agree with you. All night long I've been saying "how is it not somehow illegal to continue to pretend this based on a book". I'm pretty sure it's not possible to deviate further from a source than this movie did. I mean, what is even the point of saying it is when they just went and completely made up their own story anyway? It was absolutely terrible.
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1-03-2008 @ 3:38PM
anncanbike said...
I remembered seeing Omega Man in the '70s and yes, they are similar... but Will Smith was over-the-top. His performance was Oscar worthy. Completely riveting throughout. Never lost me for a minute, I was sorry to see the movie end though, hopefully there's an alternate ending on the DVD that will justify Neville efforts.
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1-08-2008 @ 11:08PM
Gary Storm said...
I didn;t know a thing about this movie, except it was big in America and Will Smith was in it.
I was blown away by how good it was. It was even better because I knew nothing about it before seeing it (not even seeing ads for it).
I agree the KV people CGI could have been better... also the deer in the first scene as well. They weren't the worst I`ve seen though... didn't ruin the movie.
Smith was amazing. Probably the most versatile actor there is.
There was a movie reviewer on radio here in Australia last week, who said the movie was good until the Zombies appeared, and didn't know why Neville was trying to innoculate Zombie's anyway. Obviously she was half-asleep if she even bothered to see the movie, as there are no zombies in this movie. The people are mutations/diseased... highly violent, strong and sensitive to UV. Not dead/undead or whatever. That really annoyed me when she based her review on having the wrong information.
See it, it's the best movie I`ve seen since 'Pursuit of Happyness', another Smith movie, strangely enough. Independence Day was ok btw... entertaining enough but full of holes.
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