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I Am Legend
Reviewed by Theo Michelfeld
Posted: December 18, 2007

Doomsday is on the box office menu once again this week, with a new adaptation of Richard Matheson’s 1957 sci-fi novel I Am Legend. Matheson’s vampire apocalypse tale has made its way to the screen twice before, in 1964 with The Last Man on Earth, and 1971 with The Omega Man. This latest version updates the proceedings to our modern day, but thanks to its extensive use of unconvincing digital environments and creatures, it already looks a bit dated—like leftovers from Jumanji-era CGI tinkering. Fortunately, the film features the timeless acting of Will Smith, and his performance, along with that of his sidekick German Shepherd, tends to steal this movie away from its own shortcomings.

Smith plays Robert Neville, an apparently sole survivor of a virus that has turned humankind into a bunch of pale, bald, unhappy vampires. Neville is a former army colonel and scientist who hunts and gathers by day, and battens down the hatches by night, all the while working on a cure that will reboot the human race. And there you have it folks—a feature-length movie. Throw in the trendy, sci-defying, “God’s-plan-for-the-human-race” ending, and you’ve got a picture.

The setting is a vacant New York City, and its digital rendering is among this film’s chief disappointments. In other recent apocalyptic films, such as Children of Men and War of the Worlds, the locations gave gritty and haunting performances. I Am Legend, on the other hand, features slick and texture-free environments that hit the eyeballs and slide right off. Furthermore, the imagery is without poetic impact. We see an abandoned Loews Cineplex, a video rental joint, and a Superman-Batman movie poster, and these glimpses are intended as evocations of our lost civilization. It’s not exactly the stuff of poignancy. Heck, I love the movies, folks, but is there no greater loss to fear or lament? I guess I should be fair and acknowledge the handful of Bob Marley songs featured in this movie. But Marley’s “Three Little Birds” has been used before, to similar effect, in the dystopian nightmare Strange Days. So subtract a point for recycled irony. My favorite of this film’s errors-in-judgment, though, is the extended cameo by a Shrek DVD on the hero’s television. Whoops. Thanks for that reminder of a brilliantly-scripted digital masterpiece that holds up well to repeated viewing? I was beginning to wonder about my options.

Worse still, the vampires that rampage through this movie are not remotely scary. Compare them to the live-action undead villains of 28 Days Later, or Zach Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, and they’re a joke—about as menacing as a digital army cloned from Michael Stipe. The biggest threat they pose is to their own illusion of reality, especially once they emerge from the shadows and begin to leap around like nothing bound by cinema’s secret weapon: physics. It’s all very detrimental to the film’s intensity.

I guess I’ve made my point that the filmmakers hired the wrong design team, but as poetic justice would have it, I Am Legend is rescued by its flesh-and-blood assets. Will Smith’s MVP performance is a feat reminiscent of Tom Hanks’ lonesome turn in Cast Away (although he does get a little more give-and-take from his dog than Hanks ever got from that volleyball.) Smith speaks now and then—to himself, to his tape recorder, to his dog, and to department store mannequins, but mostly he simply wears the film’s emotional content on his face. His stoicism, determination, resourcefulness, increasing hopelessness, and flagging sanity keep the movie steadily dynamic and engaging. And if you’re engaged, folks, can you really complain? Furthermore, the tragically-flawed but nonetheless noble German Shepherd adds an element of love to the story that stakes the emotions even higher.

A masterpiece it is not, but I Am Legend is an oddly classy genre picture. It also accidentally delivers a keen statement on the current state of Hollywood cinema. A lone human soul defeats an onslaught of goofy, lazy digital effects and saves us all from living hell. Hooray. Score one for humanity—with thanks to Will Smith, and his analog dog.

Copyright © 2007 Theo Michelfeld