A Pinoy Blog About Nothing

Loosely based on Richard Matheson’s novel, I Am Legend stars Will Smith as Robert Neville, a military scientist looking for the cure to an airborne virus which has decimated 90% of the world’s population. Yes it’s Will Smith trying to save the world again. And if you have watched his world-saving adventures in the past, I Am Legend pretty much goes the same way although with prettier graphics and doing with less supporting cast members. Spoilers after the jump.

Adding to the fast moving zombie/undead fad in Hollywood, I Am Legend scores very few scares and relies heavily on Smith’s charisma to make you care for him as possibly the last man on Earth. Instead of vampire-like creatures and relocating the action of the novel from Southern California to New York, the movie version goes directly to the action of Will Smith being alone in the big bad scary world. The virus, designed by a scientist to cure cancer, has turned 90% of the population into hairless, UV-light sensitive creatures who feed on other humans. Smith’s Neville is immune to the virus and is struggling to find other survivors while working on the possible cure to the disease. While Smith hunts and lurks in the daytime, the hairless zombie/vampires own the night.

You can have a worse actor doing the actor-ly thing in this movie. Three quarters of the movie is just Smith alone, emoting, talking to his dog. To his credit, Smith doesn’t overdo it - we like him. We’d like to see him succeed. But we’d like to see him do more. The movie takes it time with Smith and his german shepherd companion. In fact, the movie does well until the third act where two other survivors appear. That’s when things get too Hollywood-y and you’re suddenly reminded of 28 Days Later. One thing that bothers me is that there seems to be no reason given why he decided to stay behind, away from his wife and daughter to stay in New York. Sure, we see the Time Magazine cover with Neville proclaiming him as soldier, hero but what exactly is his relationship with the virus? Did the military ‘weaponized’ it and the contagion was a result of that mistake? Why did he stay in New York apart from duty? They never did truly answer it or it just totally went over my head.

There’s always a problem with a movie if the only thing you can remember positively about it are the computer generated images. There’s an eerie beauty about a Manhattan without people, overgrown with weeds with deer and lions roaming wild. Neville, as part of his efforts to stave off loneliness, placed dressed up mannequins around his usual haunts and would occasionally talk to them as if they were real people. It’s hard to imagine a place as vibrant as Manhattan be devoid of people yet there it is on the screen. As much as Smith is a good actor, he just couldn’t lift the last act to make it truly memorable.

I would recommend I Am Legend for big screen viewing so you don’t miss out on the great CG wizardry but only after you’ve seen other movies on the screen like No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Atonement, or Juno. It’s an entertaining enough movie (and it gets pluses for the Bob Marley props) but it barely scratches the surface of the themes of the novel.