Will Smith saves the world

Will Smith and the special effects are the two main reasons for watching I Am Legend. It might also help to be a fan of Bob Marley. This is another adaptation of sci-fi and "Twilight Zone" writer Richard Mathieson's 1954 novel of the same name. There have been two previous film variations, with Vincent Price (’64) and Charlton Heston (’71). The basic story is about a military scientist who believes himself to be the last surviving healthy human after a virus has depopulated the planet leaving only (in this version) hordes of raging nocturnal mutants. Neville (this time Smith) has injected himself with an experimental vaccine that makes him immune. He’s still trying to find one that will work on others and cure the infected. He insists (this time) on remaining at what he calls "Ground Zero"—Manhattan—to do his work.

The movie has done well with some NYC film critics. Apparently they like seeing a post-apocalyptic version of their home town free, if at a horrible cost, of tourists or holiday crowds.

Speaking of costs, Lawrence’s movie has gotten another kind of injection: lots of money, $200 million, by reports. Money does not bring sophistication and indeed may banish it. But it means the filmmakers can afford Smith, a charismatic movie star who makes a convincing superhero. Already extremely buff in I, Robot (which this role somewhat reprises), Smith’s now not only in even better physical shape (we see him working out, with his trusty female German Shepherd, Sam), but also a mercurial actor, able to register every conceivable human emotion. Unfortunately for most of the two hours he has nobody to share his emotions with but Sam.

The most notable ones are desperation, loneliness, and despair. This is, as has been pointed out, not only the most expensive Rin Tin Tin movie of all time, but also a vision of the ultimate urban alienation. I Am Legend is at its strongest when it evokes the sadness of a world without people in it. Other than Sam, Neville has nobody to talk to but manikins he seems to have arranged himself in a video shop, and at home nobody to watch but Shrek and old recordings of TV news shows before disaster struck, some time around Christmas. It’s not easy being the last man in New York. Occasionally Neville sees flashbacks of the departure of his wife and son during a tumultuous and unsuccessful evacuation that recalls both Spielberg’s War of the Worlds and Cuaron's Children of Men. Then he knows he is alone. Roaring about the city in a Mustang 5000 feebly trying to shoot wild deer (which he's surprisingly inept at), talking to Sam, and doing his workouts are not distractions for long from the angst of isolation. For us, it’s fun looking at the CGI images of a deserted Manhattan that is already, after three years, overgrown with weeds and overrun with deer being preyed upon by lions.

This high-budget Neville lives appropriately, in a big house on Washington Square fitted with heavy steel doors to shut him in at night, when the infected ones, who’re light sensitive like vampires, go on the rampage. In the basement is a full laboratory where he pursues his research on animals and captured infected humans, recording his findings in streaming video. The bridges may have split in two, but he's still got power. He also has an AM radio message on all stations setting up a meeting with any healthy survivors down by the docks at noon every day. Like the father and son in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, he sometimes breaks fearfully into houses to scavenge canned goods and other preserved eatables.

In Mathieson's Cold War era novel, it was biological warfare between Russian and China that depopulated the planet; this time it’s the fault of science. Three years ago a doctor (Emma Thompson) engineered a virus capable of preventing cancer. Unfortunately it horribly mutated, turning the the inoculated into raging vampire killers. The resulting creatures are bald hyper-muscled creatures very like the infected of 28 Days Later and 28Weeks Later only more expensive, though they lack variety, since 90% of them look like Woody Harrelson on steroids.

In a carryover from the book, whose hero is more ordinary and vulnerable, Neville has an uneasy hold on his sanity, and despite his air of logic in the lab (and his denial of the existence of God—though he fervently believes in the humanism of Bob Marley) he can occasionally lose it, fly into a rage, and do really stupid things. Handling a dire situation unwisely, he gets himself injured and brings grief to Sam. Despairing later, he randomly attacks a pack of the infected, apparently welcoming death at their hands (or teeth). And then somehow he’s rescued by a mother and her young son, Anna (Alice Braga of City of God) and Ethan (Charlie Tahan). By then the movie is past its prime and the finale is neither convincing nor satisfying, and visions of half a dozen other zombie/vampire sci-fi movies, all of them made on a lower budget with more interesting results, are left dancing in our heads—as well as some other big budget ones that weren’t any better than this momentarily exciting and energetic, but not imaginatively very stimulating effort.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.