I Am Legend - Review

Starring: Will Smith
Written by: Akiva Goldsman, based on
too many writers' work to mention
Directed by: Francis Lawrence
Runtime: 1 hr 40 minutes

I Am Legend is a retread of The Omega Man (Charlton Heston), which was a retread of The Last Man on Earth (Vincent Price), which was itself based on a book by Richard Matheson called I Am Legend. Talk about coming full circle.

I have grown too weary to complain about Hollywood remaking old classics. It has become such a common thing to remake movies that there is no point wondering if Hollywood has run out of ideas. It has. These days, a movie doesn't even have to be that old for Hollywood to remake it (The Fog, Halloweeen, Dawn of the Dead, so forth). Essentially, if you are over the age of thirty, your movie-going experience is only going to get worse and worse, as all of the flicks you saw as a teenager will be remade in the next ten years. And they will probably suck.

I Am Legend does not. It's a fun film that moves along at a very good clip. There are inconsistencies in the story, but the film doesn't slow down long enough to let you dwell on them. Yet it's old: we know what's going to happen. So even if I were to rate this movie a 10 (which I wouldn't), I would have to instantly knock it down to a 7 because I already know what's around the bend. In effect, I'm not an audience member, but a copy editor.

The story is an old one, and smacks of The Twilight Zone. Humanity thinks it has developed a cure for cancer. Instead of being a cure, the drug wipes out the Earth's population by turning them into nocturnal zombies.

Robert Neville (Will Smith) is the last normal man on Earth. He lives out his days by trying to keep occupied: hunting wild deer in Times Square, driving golf balls off the deck of a deserted ship, jogging with his dog on a treadmill. He keeps a close eye on his watch, lest he stays out after dark and is killed by the zombies.

If you've seen The Omega Man, starring Charlton Heston, then I Am Legend won't surprise you. It follows the Heston story very closely. Will Smith's character in the revamped version is much more the scientist, attempting to find a cure for the zombie disease. Beyond that, their characters are the same.

Which isn't a bad thing. I don't know why, but I don't get tired of lonely stories. They're the ultimate story for asking the question, "What would I do?"

You've got New York City to yourself. Every car is yours to steal, every window yours to smash. But how many fast car rides and broken windows does it take before you slowly start to lose your mind?

I've pointed out before that lonely movies need to give their characters something to talk to. In Cast Away, it was a volleyball. In 1408, it was a tape recorder. In I Am Legend, it is a dog. The dog as character is not very important, because we know he is placed there as a device. Again, for whatever reason, a character appears more sane for talking to a brick than for talking to himself, and it is a handy way of telling us what the character is thinking and feeling.

I have no problem with that, as long as the character does it convincingly, which Will Smith does. He is a very good actor, if somewhat prone to overacting the scenes in which he feels emotional pain. As an action star he probably can't be topped, and as a drama star he is quite good. The scenes where he cries make me wince every time.

But what about the movie? I can't really tell you. It's a lonely movie, so anything I say will be a spoiler. I can say that the special effects involving the zombies are fair, but the special effects involving a loose lioness and her cub are terrible. I read recently that CGI was considered cheating by the Academy when Tron hit the scene. It wasn't until later that computers were an accepted special effects device.

I wish they would go back to that philosophy of CGI-as-cheating. Filmmakers have begun relying on CGI so much that even cheap computer generated junk is making it into big budget pictures. It's as if the producers are saying, "Well, everyone knows it's computer generated anyway, so why bother spending more money to cover it up?" To which I respond, "Couldn't you hire a lion tamer for a couple of days?" The effects in The Mist were a laugh, and the lions in I Am Legend are (and this is critical) distractingly fake.

I Am Legend is a good escapist movie, and it's clear that's what the producers intended. As usual, the film "could have been more," but because they didn't reach for more, I won't knock them for not getting there.