I AM LEGEND
Director: Francis Lawrence Stars: Will Smith, Dash Mihok, Alice Braga, Emma Thompson
Reviewed by GREG KING
I Am Legend is an effective combination of horror and sci-fi that will satisfy most audiences. This is the third screen version of Richard Matheson’s 1954 novella which offered an intriguing variation on the vampire legend. The first was 1964’s unsatisfactory The Last Man On Earth, with a miscast Vincent Price in the lead role. The most famous version is 1971’s The Omega Man, starring Charlton Heston who, at that time, had established himself as the star of a number of futuristic sci-fi films exploring dystopian worlds (Planet Of the Apes, Soylent Green, etc).
Here Will Smith steps into the role of Robert Neville, an army scientist who becomes the only human survivor, when a possible cancer cure has mutated into a deadly virus that wipes out most of the earth’s population. The film is set in 2012, five years after the plague has decimated the planet. Neville has endured years of loneliness while he tries to find a cure. His only companion is his faithful pet German shepherd Sam. During the day Neville treats the empty city as his private playground, while regularly broadcasting on the CB hoping to find other survivors. But at night he bunkers down in his well-protected house to avoid the armies of zombie-like creatures who rule the dark streets. Neville’s detachment and sense of isolation ends when he stumbles across another survivor (Alice Braga) and her young son, and he becomes their protector.
Smith is on screen for the whole time, often appearing in scenes by himself, and he carries the film superbly, giving his character an essential honesty and decency and vulnerability. The scene in which he deals with the death of Sam is particularly wrenching.
While I Am Legend sticks pretty closely to the storyline of The Omega Man, the biggest departure comes in the depiction and treatment of the zombies. In Boris Sagal’s 1971 film the zombies had a humanity and intelligence that enabled them to establish a dialogue with Neville. Here they are mindless, viciously rapacious creatures that look like they have wandered in from the set of The Hills Have Eyes, and have no traces of humanity at all.
Director Francis Lawrence cut his teeth on vampire mythology with the inferior comic book adaptation Constantine, and he handles the early development of tension superbly. However, his handling of the climactic action sequences leave a little to be desired, and are a little clumsy in their staging. Writers Akiva Goldsman and Mark Protosevich infuse this new version with nice touches of paranoia as well while remaining reasonably faithful to Matheson’s singularly bleak vision of a post-apocalyptic world inhabited by mutated zombies with a savage blood lust.
Unlike a lot of bloated, big budget films, I Am Legend’s enormous budget can be seen on the screen. The special effects are, for the most part, tremendous. Particularly impressive are the early scenes that turn New York City into a wasteland, with grass and shrubs growing from the deserted roads and abandoned skyscrapers. Less impressive are the clumsy effects that create the vampire-like zombies.
***
Reviewed by PETER MALONE
I Am Legend has an interesting history. It was written as a novel by Richard Matheson who also wrote prolifically for the big screen and for television, including a number of the Roger Corman adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories in the 1960's and other horror films. The novel was brought to the screen in a small-budget production filmed in Italy with Vincent Price as The Last Man On Earth in 1964.
In the early 1970s, it became an intriguing film, The Omega Man, with Charlton Heston, a film with interesting religious overtones.
There are religious overtones in this version which reverts to Matheson’s original title. There is God-talk, talk about evil and destruction and the absence of God, talk about prayer and providence.
This time Will Smith is Robert Neville, a scientist as well as a military man who has witnessed the destruction of the human race because of a virus run rampant, an alleged cure for cancer (explained in the prologue of the film by an uncredited Emma Thompson) that proved the arrogance of scientists and the destructive consequences for human beings (a constant theme of science fiction films and an issue going back, at least, to Frankenstein). Neville drives around New York City – and the effects to show the empty city, the damage, the abandoned cars, the weeds now growing are excellent. It looks really real.
Psychologically, the film is interesting in its dramatizing of a man, immune from the virus, whose only companion is the family dog, who lives in grief-filled memories of his wife and daughter and the evacuation of the city, and replays of TV news bulletins (and watching and mouthing to Shrek). He broadcasts out of New York just in case there are any survivors.
He patrols during the day, works in his laboratory at night to try to find a remedy. During the night he is in danger from hoards of mutants (straight out of special effects for ghoul movies) whose minds have gone and are innately vicious. The only hope for humanity is if there is a small community of people who are not infected and if there is a remedy to prevent the spread of the infection and heal victims.
Will Smith has a presence and charm that means there is no difficulty in his keeping our interest and attention throughout the film. There are moments of eerie tension, moments of shock, moments of life-and-death combat and the will to survive.
One of the advantages of The Omega Man over the present film is that the mutants were victims of radiation but that they had not lost their intelligence. Rather, they were like a brotherhood of darkness, puritanical, bent on the destruction of civilization which they blamed for what had happened. They were led by a sinisterly charismatic leader (Anthony Zerbe) who was humanly plausible in his appeal, but deadly. Another interesting feature of The Omega Man was Charlton Heston’s self-sacrifice, a lance piercing his side against the background of a cross with blood flowing into the water.
I Am Legend has opted for the horror film scenario in its creation of its mutants and a more ‘secular’ imagery for its sacrifice. Nevertheless, this is a smooth and effective thriller which raises all kinds of issues about life, survival – and a reminder as we look at all the ‘things’, all the possession left behind, that they are ultimately nothing compared with the basic human values and with life.
Reviewed by MARCUS SINCLAIR
Twice filmed previously, with Vincent Price in the starring role (1964) and then Charlton Heston (1971), I Am Legend delivers the goods on most counts. It has Will Smith as the scientist/medic, the last man alive in New York after an attempt by a distinguished scientists to cure cancer goes wrong and causes a virus that turns most humans into savage animal like creatures, struggling to find a cure to reverse the situation.
Smith turns in an excellent performance that gives great credibility to the film. Frantic to succeed, lonely, and sad, he searches the now deserted streets of New York with its abandoned cars, empty houses and shops, stocks up on supplies and, at night keeps himself locked away in his house which is set up like a fortress.
As the film develops we learn why he takes such precautions. Director Francis Lawrence knows how to build nail-biting tension, deliver thrills and keep the narrative flowing. He makes great use of the sets and digital technology to create an atmosphere of loneliness, despair and fear. His camera moves freely - exploring, probing, lingering - and he has the ability to slow it down - to put a situation briefly on hold in order to keep the viewer feeling uneasy. There is much food for thought here. As the camera and Smith wander over the vast city we can marvel at that which once was - of humankind's magnificent creation with its skyscrapers, it various modes of transportation, its roads, bridges and beautiful parklands; and, in turn, shudder at the fanatical devotion to science and how, if not kept in check by carefully controlled experimentation and tight Government regulation, it can go wrong and destroy civilisation as we know it. It also makes us realise just how fragile human life really is.
At another level the film goes slightly off the rails. It is obvious from the very beginning as to how the relationship between man and dog is going to end; but to Lawrence's credit he does not allow the relationship between the Smith and the woman (Alice Braga - a not particularly convincing performer) to develop into the usual Hollywood cliché of lust, satisfaction and living happily ever after. But the major problem, the escape of the woman and the child from Smith's fortress on the island of New York to the haven in Vermont is not explained. Lawrence should have taken more care and time with this, threshing it out in some detail as to how it was accomplished. And their arrival is rather Disneyish. Not good enough, and a bit of a let down in what is otherwise a fine piece of film-making.