I Am Legend
I just came back from the local cinema where they were showing Will Smith’s latest flick: I Am Legend. The premise of the movie is such: In 2009, scientists discover what they believe is a viral cure for cancer. Several thousand people are cured, but it soon turns out that the virus has mutated into a new strain called “KV”, which essentially turns people and animals into rabies-crazed zombie-vampires.
Fast-forward to the future and Robert Neville (Smith), a former virologist and colonel for the U.S. Army is living alone in the ruins of New York city. Alone save for his dog, some deer, a couple of lions, and hordes of light-fearing zompires.
Smith does a good job portraying Neville’s descent into solitude-induced dementia, and you genuinely feel pity for the character. In all the movie was a good watch. It wasn’t great, and could have been better, but it was still a fun movie.
Continue reading for spoilerific comments.
So the movie was good, but could have been better. Here are my major complaints, full spoiler warning applies:
- CGI vampires. The effects used to portray the infected were dated and overall detracted from the feel of the film. Having live actors in make-up and maybe slight CGI touch-ups would not have been as much of a distraction and sustained the suspension of disbelief.
- CGI animals (the lions for fuck’s sake). See above.
- Shiny new cars. Every car driven by the heroes looks brand-spanking new, while everything else is dirty, rusted and scratched? Look, I understand that your corporate sponsors from the automotive industry want their babies to look nice and clean, but come on! :/
- Deus Ex Machina. Why is it always by “listening to god” that the heroes realize what they need to do? What ever happened to good ol’ human intuition? Granted it’s still Neville who finds the cure through his own intelligence and perseverance, I just wish that writers and directors would stop attributing coincidence and genuine epiphanies (in the non-religious definition) to “whispers from the divine”.
- I found the first 2/3 of the movie to be much better than the last 1/3. It wasn’t terrible, just left me wanting more. Or something different. The scene where the doors of the colony open and the church is right there, bells a-ringing and everything was groan-worthy.
To not end it on a down note (I still think the movie is worth seeing), here are some of the things I enjoyed:
- Smith did a great job of depicting Neville’s daily routine of survival in the ruined city. His relationship with Sam is wonderful, and the scene where he is forced to kill Sam was perfect.
- The flashbacks showing the final moments of Neville’s family were well done and well placed.
- The scene where Neville follows Sam into the abandoned building had me on the edge of my seat - very well done.
2 Responses to “I Am Legend”
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I agree with your comments. The infected were effective though did remind me of the superhuman mummies from The Mummy movies ( did their moths have to open as wide as a Tex Avery cartoon? I thought the lions were real and blue screened…I guess not. The sounds were very creepy and probably watching this with no sound isn’t half as scary. Smith was going for an oscar in this one. Such a sad character. The dog should win an oscar as well.
Lastly, I saw the building I grew up in in one of the shots…looking post apocolyptic…very cool.
Yep, Smith’s acting was really top notch. The dog was great as well, and when I say her final scene was perfect, I mean it was perfectly, terribly sad.
Thanks for the reading.