I Am Legend film rating and review

I Am Legend (2007) Film Rating and Review :

LONELY PLANET

So if we must watch someone wandering about aimlessly as the last man on Earth, it may as well be someone who can hold our attention like the Charismatic Will Smith, star of I Am Legend. While Smith certainly conjures both pathos and absurd laughs as Robert Neville, a military scientist whose immunity to a deadly virus leaves him stranded in Manhattan with only his trusted German shepherd for companionship, it’s the visual effects in director Francis Lawrence’s film that truly dazzle. CGI-enhanced images of Times Square, Washington Square Park and Tribeca, eerily silent and still and covered in weeds, provide a haunting set-up. Then come the Infected― the ones who didn’t die from the virus but rather were transformed into shrieking, flailing crazies who only come out at night. And here’s where I Am Legend turns from a quite meditation on the nature of humanity into a B-movie schlock fest.

It’s too bad, too, because Lawrence, who previously directed Keanu Reeves in the thriller Constantine, is really onto something for a while. With the help of stark cinematography from Andrew Lesnie, he sucks you into this comatose version of the city that never sleeps. It’s totally disconcerting, but, at the same time, engrossing ― watching Neville roam about with his dog, Sam, and a hunting rifle, past Grand Central Terminal and billboards for Wicked and Rent, you have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen next.

Military man that he is, Neville has his routine down cold, with a daily radio broadcast seeking out any other supervisor and alarms to warm him when the sun’s about to go down. But he’s also a human being who misses the wife and little girl he lost during the city’s frantic evacuation a few years back. He talks to his dog as if she was a friend and is polite enough to return the movies he borrows from his local video store before checking out new once. By now, he can recite every word to Shrek, which is amusing and surreal ― one blockbuster star mimicking others. For all his charm and personality, Smith doesn’t quite have the emotional depth of Hanks to pull it off completely, but he does make you sense his pain nonetheless.

Then Neville’s peaceful if tenuous grasp on realty and sanity are disrupted when he realises the Infected have begun adapting, and are not just hiding in abandoned buildings anymore but rather banding together to destroy him. Conveniently, there is one guy who is the biggest and baddest and serves as their leader (Dash Mihok, known appropriately as Alpha Male). And conveniently, when other survivors do finally respond to Neville’s daily radio calls, then happen to be a beautiful woman (Alice Braga) and her son, who are about the same age as his wife and daughter.

The three of them hunker down in Neville’s fortified brownstone for one last apocalyptic battle with the baddies. Lots of explosions and rapid gunfire ensue ― sound and fury signifying nothings, which is a shame, since I Am Legend looked like it might have had something to say after all.

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