Caffeinated Clint
Your stereotypical Will Smith sci-fi flick. It could have been so much more, unfortunately it plays out as more of a missed opportunity.
Will Smith
“There was no sound but that of his shoes and the now senseless singing of birds. Once I thought they sang because everything was right with the world, Robert Neville thought. I know now I was wrong. They sing because they’re feeble-minded.” – Richard Matheson
Director Francis Lawrence’s “I Am Legend” is the latest adaptation of Matheson’s 1954 sci-fi novel by the same name, which has been filmed twice before, as “The Last Man on Earth” (1964) starring Vincent Price, and “The Omega Man” (1971) starring Charlton Heston.
Adapted by writers Mark Protosevich (“Poseidon”) and Akiva Goldsman (“A Beautiful Mind”), “I Am Legend” stars Will Smith stars Robert Neville, a military virologist in 2012 Manhattan – the only survivor of a man-made plague that has wiped out humanity. By day he prowls the city for supplies with his faithful dog Sam; by night he hides in his fortified Washington Square home from nasty bands of light-sensitive, flesh-eating zombies.
In the original novel, which Stephen King says influenced him more than any other, the creatures that stalk Neville are quite different. Neville strung up garlic and used mirrors, crosses and sharpened stakes against his enemies, who were like traditional vampires, not the super-strong zombies Will Smith battles.
By changing the nature of the creatures, the book’s low-key realism and believability is lost to Hollywood clichés and cop-outs. Neville’s sharpened stakes are replaced with high-powered rifles and grenades. By making Neville a scientist his nature is also changed. Instead of merely trying to survive, Will Smith’s character combs the streets for lab subjects to test anti-virus serums on in an attempt to end the plague.
One has to wonder, with 99% of human life eradicated, what good is an anti-virus anyway, when the sole survivor is already immune?
Will Smith’s performance as Neville is memorable and in its own way, just as haunting as Vincent Price’s so many years ago. Smith’s Neville is disturbed by the intense psychological trauma of not only having everyone he ever knew die, but also being completely isolated from all human contact for three years; his only companion being his dog, Sam.
The first half of the film is brilliant. We buy into Neville’s loneliness – his daily routine of visiting the local video store and sparking conversations with mannequins he’s set up along the way. Then there’s the pier incident. You see, every day at Noon Robert Neville sends out a radio broadcast, asking survivors to meet him at a pier in the city.
And then it happens – Neville encounters two other survivors, a woman named Anna and Ethan, a little boy. It’s from this point that the film breaks down, losing all the despair and isolation it built up in the previous act, and replacing it with the predictable.
In the end, “I Am Legend” is a great popcorn flick but falls short of paying tribute to Matheson’s amazingly dark and horrifying novel. Director Francis Lawrence (“Constantine”) is too dependent on computer-generated effects to tell his story. The zombies are completely generic, far from legendary and rarely convincing.
I suppose it is more cost effective to sacrifice story and believability for the demands of today’s sales-driven film industry than it is to hire a few extras to chase Will Smith around the city.
“I Am Legend” is your stereotypical Will Smith sci-fi flick. It could have been so much more, unfortunately it plays out as more of a missed opportunity.
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Reviewer : Adam Frazier
