Movie Review: I Am Legend
From the trailers and previews I had seen for ‘I Am Legend’ this movie looked just well… Legendary. I knew this was going to be a film worth seeing in the theater and I wasn’t disappointed when I did this past weekend.
Apparently I Am Legend is based off of a book by sci-fi writer Richard Matheson and is the 4th movie derived from the 1954 novel with the same title. Not having read the book myself I only had a vague idea of what this movie was going to be about.
In the movie, Will Smith plays the lead role as military virologist Dr. Robert Neville. After a rapid virus mutation that wipes out roughly 5.4 billion people and infects an additional 588 million with a rabies like illness that degenerates them into in-human animals, Neville finds himself as the last person alive in New York City, and possibly the world. Neville just so happens to be part of less than 1% of a population that is immune to the virus and throughout the movie he uses the immunity to his advantage and gives everything to find a cure that he hopes will reverse the effects on the few left infected.
The story might sound like a lot of the “zombie” movies that have come out over the last couple years, for example the ‘28 Days/Weeks Later’ series or even ‘Resident Evil’ with the whole “man made apocalypse” aspect in the plot. The main difference in I Am Legend is this story feels very real, almost disturbingly real. You can tell right away that the story isn’t supposed to be focused on the vampire like monsters that roam the night. I don’t want to give it all away, but I will say that Will Smith does a great job playing a man who essentially goes borderline insane from isolation and his fight for survival.
Will Smith really was the perfect person for the main (and one of the few) roles in this movie, you can easily find yourself feeling what he is going through as it’s expressed perfectly. He also does a good job pulling off intelligent scientist thing to where it’s believable. His various skills in survival, experimentation, and preparation were both fun and interesting to watch.
A few reviews that I have read so far said that this movie is boring and there isn’t the amount of action that is expected. I do agree that most of the action scenes are already shown off in the previews, but it’s far from boring. When you’re not sitting at the edge of your seat, you’re watching in anticipation of how the story will unfold. Also, everything was so well put together, all of the special effects were high quality but more importantly all of the little details that we’re put into the movie are to me, what really makes it stand out.
I would have liked to see more back-story to what was going on, you’ll notice that the movie sort of jumps right into the aftermath. However, Neville‘s flashbacks throughout the movie give enough information to have a grasp on why everything happened the way it did.
So, to sum this up, I Am Legend is a great film to end 2007. Personally, it was one of the better movies that I’ve seen all year. If you’re a Will Smith fan or your into the ‘apocalyptic zombies’ genre then it’s definitely worth seeing in the cinema this holiday season. If you want to wait for the DVD instead, rest assured that I Am Legend will be a solid addition to any collection.