I AM LEGEND Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey S. Karten
Warner Bros
Grade: B-
Directed by: Francis Lawrence
Written By: Mark Protosevich, Akiva Goldsman, from Richard Matheson’s novel “I Am Legend”
Cast: Will Smith, Alice Braga, Dash Mihok, Charlie Tahan, Salli Richardson, Willow Smith
Screened at AMC Empire, NYC, 12/12/07
Opens: December 14, 2007 Hey out there, all you ambitious guys and gals living in Tuscaloosa and Duluth and Sioux City who feel cramped in those towns where everyone knows your name. You want to come to the Big Apple to make try your luck but what scares you is the one percent vacancy rate in Manhattan apartments, nor do you care for the average rent of $3,000 per month, right? With Broadway tickets going for $100 a pop, you wonder whether you’ll be happy spending all your nights watching reruns of “West Side Story” on a DVD. Not to worry. If you have patience and wait a few years, until 2012 to be exact, the vacancy rate on the island will be 99.9%, you can enter the theater showing “Wicked” (yep, still running according to the signs) for free, and what’s more there’s plenty of parking, no traffic problems and the rent is…zero! How’s that for a dream metropolis? Not so fast. You may not like what you see, because the only company you’ll have when you get here is a slim but muscular Mr. Robert Neville (Will Smith) and his affectionate, loyal German Shepherd, Samantha—at least for a while—until Neville forgets the old expression, “Be careful what you wish for.” He gets on the AM band and calls in a neighborly way for friends, because MySpace is no longer running. He tells people to meet him at the South Street Seaport at noon when the sun is high where he, together with his dog and his submachine gun will provide companionship and security, little realizing that he is the person who will need all the security he can get. You see in 2012, according to Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman, who adapted Richard Matheson’s sci-fi novel to the big screen, cancer was cured in 2012 (or so says a character played in a cameo by Emma Thompson) but there’s blowback. A virus is unleashed that apparently wipes out almost everyone in New York City, which is quarantined by the President, though it turns out that most of the world has been extinguished by the plague that makes the Black Death of 1347 look like a case of the sniffles. Only biologist Robert Neville and his dog are immune, so Neville pursues Time Magazine Person of the Year and a Nobel by using his own blood to find a cure, only to find out that several other people have survived and at the same have not survived. They are undead, who identify themselves as undead rather than dead or alive by being bald. The movie never does make clear what this in-between zone is between a survivor and a dead person is, but fans of zombie-vampire-undead-monster pics will dig the roaring baldies while fans of sci-fi will like the first half of the movie and will resist the temptation to tune out or walk out when the big hairless creatures begin to sound off. “I Am Legend” is similar to Boris Segal’s “The Omega Man” (1971), with Charlton Heston in the Will Smth role of a man under siege by a race of zombies set loose by germ warfare. That movie was preceded by Sidney Salkow’s “The Last Man on Earth” (1964) with Vincent Price as the sole survivor of plague, besieged by victims who thirst for his blood. Of the three version of the Matheson novel, “I Am Legend” is the most technically sophisticated, with director Francis Lawrence making dandy use of several sites in Manhattan spookily emptied of people—Washington Square Park where Robert Neville lives just by the famous arch at number 11; the South Street Seaport; the Brooklyn Bridge as examples. Flashbacks clue us in from time to time of better days three years earlier when Neville sees his wife and kids off the island which had become quarantined, while Neville’s flat is well-stocked with food for him and his dog. The computer graphics look fake, however, surprisingly so in this technically proficient era, giving themselves away by roaring each time they are on the attack. Watch for great shot, though, of a CGI lioness successful bringing down a deer just before Neville is about to shoot the animal. While this is a macho film, there is one major note of feminine beauty in the person of Anna (played by the Brazilian actress Alice Braga, from “City of God”) who insists that there is a community of non-bald survivors in Vermont. Anna insists that the Deity would not allow such a travesty to occur without providing for such a community in the Green Mountain State, while Neville dismisses her contention with “There is no God.” So much for theological discussion. “I Am Legend” would have been fine, albeit short, had it ended just before the first bald guy showed. Rated PG-13. 103 minutes © 2007 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online | 
